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Book 


COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT 

























Peter Amslie 

Ambassador of Good IFill 













Peter Ainslie 




p 


eter 


Ainslie 


Ambassador of Good WILL 


Finis S. Idl 


eman 



Willett, Clark & Company 

CHICAGO NEW YORK 

1941 


C/ ^ 





Copyright 1941 by 
FINIS S. IDLEMAN 


BX1545 

AsTs> 


Manufactured in The U. S. A. by The Plimpton Press 
Norwood, Mass.-LaPorte, Ind. 


©Cl A 1 53647 



RECEIVED 

APR 2 3 1941 

COPYRIGHT OFFICE 




This volume 
is a labor of love, and is 
affectionately dedicated 
to the children of 
Peter and Mary Ainslie, 
Elizabeth and Peter IV 
































































































































Foreword 


The unexpected passing of Peter Ainslie 
brought to all who enjoyed the blessing of intimate friend¬ 
ship with him a peculiar sense of bereavement. It was 
difficult to think of a world and a fellowship from which 
he had departed. In the wide ranges of his association 
he had so fixed and conspicuous a place that his going, pre¬ 
mature as all his friends felt it to be, was an irreparable 
loss to many groups and many causes. 

Dr. Idleman has rendered distinguished service to the 
wide circle of Dr. Ainslie’s friends and admirers in gather¬ 
ing the voluminous materials of a very industrious and 
unwearied life, and putting them into so concise a form. 
It is a volume which all who knew the subject will find it 
necessary to possess, but which will appeal strongly to 
ministers of the gospel, particularly young men of vision 
and courage. 

Peter Ainslie was a singular compound of gentleness and 
inflexibility. In his championship of new and often un¬ 
popular causes he was fearless and aggressive, and likely 
to arouse vehement opposition. It was an education in 
the art of self-control to observe his perfect serenity under 
the most virulent attacks, and the fine courtesy with which 
he responded to any such rhetorical barrage. One could 
have imagined that he was under conviction as he listened 
with concentrated attention to the arguments of his critics. 
It was only when he began to dissect their statements, in 


Foreword 


viii 

his quiet and gracious manner, that their propositions fell 
apart and lay scattered over the place. 

In the city where he labored for so many years he was a 
revered and beloved figure. The clergy held him in high 
regard, even the Roman Catholic cardinal according him 
a marked degree of friendship. By the press of all persua¬ 
sions he was respected. Social and business groups called 
upon him often for addresses. In many ways he was the 
most distinguished citizen of Baltimore. He was untiring 
in his literary activities, as the list of his published writings 
attests. And other manuscripts on high themes lay un¬ 
finished on his desk when he laid down his pen. 

One of the chief proofs of his flexible and courageous 
mind was his ability and willingness to modify his views 
on matters of moment on which his opinions were well 
known and supposed to be established and unchangeable. 
Dr. Idleman has pointed out the fact that in the earlier 
years of his ministry he held to millenarian views, and was 
in much demand as a speaker in gatherings of that per¬ 
suasion. Later it was noticed that he rarely touched upon 
that theme, and on being asked the reason he said that 
the character of the audiences had led him to change his 
emphasis. Similar was his modification of views regard¬ 
ing the admission of unimmersed persons to membership 
in his church, a change that gave great offense to many of 
the conservative members of his own communion. 

But the interest with which his name is most closely 
identified in the thought of those who knew him is that 
of Christian unity. In spite of the fact that the body of 
people to which he belonged, the Disciples of Christ, was 
committed by its origin and statements to this theme, yet 
of all who have entered the life eternal from this fellow¬ 
ship four alone stand out as consistent and unfailing advo¬ 
cates of the union of the churches: Thomas Campbell, 


Foreword 


ix 


James Harvey Garrison, James McBride Philputt and Peter 
Ainslie. Many others have been loyal to “ the Plea,” as it 
has been termed, but none I dare to affirm have given it 
that devoted and persistent vindication which was the life¬ 
long habit of these four. And among them Dr. Ainslie 
might easily have been accorded the honor of primus inter 
pares. 

From the beginnings of his ministry he gave constant 
emphasis to this theme. He threw himself with ardor into 
every movement that promised any measure of progress 
toward this objective. He was particularly hospitable to 
the proposals made by the Episcopal and the Congrega¬ 
tional churches. He was a member of the deputation sent 
to the churches of Great Britain to propose a plan of union. 
He attended every one of the European conferences look¬ 
ing toward world fellowship of Christians, and wherever 
he went his voice was lifted in earnest advocacy of the cause 
that was so much upon his heart. 

In the year 1910 Dr. Ainslie was president of the Na¬ 
tional Convention of the Disciples, the highest honor that 
could be conferred on a member of that communion. The 
convention was held in Topeka, Kansas, and in his presi¬ 
dential address he spoke with great frankness and urgency 
on some of the subjects on which he felt that plain words 
should be spoken. This gave offense to some of the dele¬ 
gates. But this disturbed him not at all. He felt that it 
was his opportunity to emphasize neglected ideals in the 
denomination. As the result of his advocacy the commit¬ 
tee on Christian unity which had existed for some years 
was transformed into the Association for the Promotion of 
Christian Unity, an organization of which Dr. Ainslie was 
made president, in which office he continued for many 
years. Under his leadership it became one of the leading 
instruments of promotion in Disciple ranks, and its gather- 


x Foreword 

ings were among the most largely attended of the conven¬ 
tion meetings. 

Opposition later developed as the result of Dr. Ainslie’s 
bold championing of more fraternal relations with other 
Christian bodies, more particularly his adoption of the 
practice of recognizing all Christians as entitled to mem¬ 
bership in his congregation, without further requirement 
in the way of rebaptism. As a result he was passed over in 
the choice of a president of the association. This dis¬ 
courtesy he accepted with entire graciousness, and contin¬ 
ued to labor untiringly for the cause he loved. He or¬ 
ganized the Christian Unity League, under whose auspices 
conferences were held in many cities. For a score of years 
he published the Christian Union Quarterly. His friends 
and admirers were a great host in many parts of the world 
and among all the sections of the church, Protestants, Cath¬ 
olics and Eastern Orthodox. 

Dr. Idleman has told in graphic terms the impressive 
story of Peter Ainslie’s life and labors, a story that will 
bring to the minds of those who knew him fresh reminders 
of his charm, his dignity, his courage and his success. 

Herbert L. Willett 


Introduction 


It IS the sincere hope of the author of this vol¬ 
ume that it may enable the reader to meet and know the 
subject of it. He has no desire to superimpose his own 
views upon the picture or to portray the subject as other 
than he was; he seeks not to create a man out of new cloth¬ 
ing put carefully on him but to let him stand before the 
reader in his own best loved suit; not to twist or warp him 
by opinions written about him but to uncover his own 
ideas; not to glorify him as a saint or superman but to show 
him as a normal human being; not to paint a likeness of 
him but to let him sit for his own portrait; not to display 
his strength and hide his weakness but to let him live in 
these pages, the human being that he was, and to leave him 
there for the reader to make his own judgment. For this 
reason generous inclusion of what Peter Ainslie said or 
wrote on any given subject is made here. 

Nor is this an effort to propagate an idea or to promote a 
cause or to glorify a movement, social or religious, to which 
Peter Ainslie may have belonged. There is no intent to 
magnify any organization, save as the total picture of this 
man may create in other men a love for it or incline them 
favorably toward his spirit and so lead them to take up his 
causes through the instruments he devised or employed. 

Most naturally the author would be gratified if anything 
herein set forth concerning the spirit and manner of Peter 
Ainslie might set other hearts on fire for the causes which 
were dear to him. But it is self-evident that no man 


Introduction 


xii 

can fight in another’s armor. Nor are the causes of one 
period the most absorbing for the next, nor yet is the 
method of one man or time best suited to serve the mind 
and mood of another. Each in his own time must elect for 
himself the instruments best adapted to his mind and spirit 
in advancing the common cause to which “ the noble living 
and the heroic dead ” of all ages are joined. 

Professor Alexander V. G. Allen, in his life of Phillips 
Brooks, recites an amusing narrative about a young theo¬ 
logical student who was one of the bishop’s luncheon guests. 
Upon reaching the library after luncheon Brooks found 
this young man all but standing on his head, looking at the 
titles of the volumes on the lowest shelf. “ What are you 
looking for? ” inquired Brooks. “ I am looking to see 
where you get it,” frankly replied the young man. 

When any gifted or good life appears on earth the first 
and most reasonable inquiry is just that. We should like 
to know how it grew to such stature and what were the con¬ 
tributing influences that combined in its making. We 
want to know “ on what meat doth this our Caesar feed.” 
If the wandering Ulysses could say, “ I am a part of all that 
I have met,” then Peter Ainslie can be at least partially 
accounted for by whatever conditions and influences united 
to beat upon his life. 

Happily for the author, the source material for the biog¬ 
raphy of Peter Ainslie lies near at hand. The very house 
where he was born still stands, and some of the neighbors 
of his earlier life still live. A vast company of those who 
shared his life and labors are here to give their impressions 
of the man and to relate personal experiences which make 
him live again. Possibly the most dependable source is 
his church, the Christian Temple, under the leadership 
of Dr. Walter Haushalter. Many members of his congre- 


Introduction 


xiii 

gation shared his labors there for over a third of a century. 
From them valuable help has been received. 

A wide company of men in communions other than his 
own have given valuable assistance. These men and 
women, who walked by his side and knew his spirit, have 
given a more intimate picture of this comrade of the way 
with whom they shared leadership in the causes of the 
American church during the first three decades of the 
twentieth century. 

The Christian Union Quarterly, of which he was editor 
for all the years of its publication, furnishes a ready mirror 
of all Peter Ainslie was and did. In that journal he talked 
and wrote as freely as in conversation. From its editorials 
the author has culled not only quotations that are used in 
this volume but the arguments Ainslie advanced for his 
philosophy of the church. He has also made use of Ainslie’s 
numerous books. These are the indices of Ainslie’s ma¬ 
turing mind and reflect the various facets of his thought 
as they touch the absorbing trends of his interest on many 
subjects through two score of years and more. 

Besides all these, the author has almost a hundred per¬ 
sonal letters which he received from Ainslie over a period 
of more than twenty years. Possibly the reader will agree 
that the intimate self-revelations of what a man writes to a 
friend will more accurately reveal his mind than what he 
sets down in books. 

It has been a deep satisfaction in the preparation of this 
work to be able to turn to Peter Ainslie’s wife, Mary Ains¬ 
lie, for help. She spared no labor to give a fuller knowl¬ 
edge and truer interpretation of her manysided husband in 
whose dreams and work she was an understanding par¬ 
ticipant. 

The address delivered by Ainslie at Topeka in 1910 is 


XIV 


Introduction 


here reprinted by permission of the Christian Evangelist 
Publishing Company, St. Louis, Missouri, and the editorial 
from the Baltimore Sun is used by permission of the editors. 

Rev. J. B. Hunley, minister of the childhood church of 
Peter Ainslie in Dunnsville, Virginia, has spent much time 
and labor in securing valuable data. 

To Dr. Herbert Willett and to Dr. Frederick W. Burn¬ 
ham the author acknowledges his deep indebtedness. Both 
were intimate friends of Peter Ainslie and are familiar with 
the movements and experiences herein recorded. They 
have given patient and painstaking care in reviewing the 
manuscript and were most helpful with counsel and criti¬ 
cism. James E. Craig of the editorial staff of the New York 
Sun has given greatly appreciated assistance in the prepara¬ 
tion of the final draft of this volume. Nor could this note 
of grateful acknowledgment close without a sincere expres¬ 
sion of thanks to Rose Starratt and Josephine Horton, 
whose devoted labors in preparing this material have been 
most praiseworthy. 

Finis S. Idleman 

New York City 


Contents 


Foreword, by Herbert L. Willett vii 

Introduction xi 

1. The Virginian Inheritance i 

2. The Contribution of the Manse 8 

3. The Seminary Years 24 

4. The Early Ministry 34 

5. The Christian Temple 42 

6. The Chrysalis Broken 60 

7. Ambassador of Christian Unity 75 

8. Ainslie as a Churchman 94 

9. Ambassador of Peace 100 

10. Crusader for Social Justice 114 

11. Ainslie and the Disciples 123 

12. His Evolving Mind 140 

13. His Literary Contribution 155 

14. His Inner Qualities 164 

15. Marriage and Home Life 172 

16. “Now the Laborer’s Task is O’er” 176 

Appreciations 183 


XV 



Illustrations 


Peter Ainslie Frontispiece 

The Parents of Peter Ainslie 12 

Cottage Hill 16 

The Christian Temple 42 

Peter Ainslie in 1910 60 

Mrs. Peter Ainslie 173 

Dr. and Mrs. Ainslie and Mary Elizabeth 174 

Peter Ainslie III and IV 176 


xvii 

















- 












Ambassador of Good Will 



- 









1 . The Virginian Inheritance 


L ET US begin by looking at the land and com¬ 
munity of Peter Ainslie’s birth, which were not the least of 
the forces that made him what he was. Peter Ainslie was 
born on June 3, 1867, in the tidewater region of Virginia, 
near the small village of Dunnsville, Essex county, which 
still exists very much as it was then. The village, like the 
region, has preserved its original characteristics better than 
have most sections of America. Its main highways are 
waterways, largely unbridgeable, since they are estuaries. 
Indeed the entire eastern portion of Virginia is quite un¬ 
changing. But because of its remoteness the birthplace 
and boyhood home of Peter Ainslie was much more con¬ 
stant in character than most areas even of Virginia. It was 
not that the community was so far from centers of radiating 
influence and engrossing human activities, but that it was 
out of the beaten path to them. 

Essex county is situated between the Rappahannock and 
James rivers. (It was of the Rappahannock that Ainslie 
said in later life, “ Its ebb and flow ever reminded me of 
the lights and shadows in God’s dealings.”) It is a com¬ 
munity whose habits are scarcely disturbed by the cross¬ 
currents of the nation’s thoroughfares. The low-lying land 
seems to be beneath the level of the estuaries that enfold 
it in their comfortable arms. Only one railway penetrates 
the region, nor does any national highway cross it. 

For three hundred years of Virginia’s history it has been 
so. This community has lived like a modern Acadia and 


2 


Peter Ainslie 


followed its own traditions. It has had few deep tragedies, 
save for the national tragedy of the Civil War (there known 
as the “ War between the States ”), which left its deepest 
wounds on the soil and in the minds of Virginia, of which 
the tidewater region is a vital part. It has preserved the 
early colonial way of life as few other sections of the east 
could do. The region of “ Tappahannock on the Rappa¬ 
hannock ” is unique in its preservation of American stock, 
unmixed with the blood of later immigrant peoples who 
have poured into the more accessible American ports of 
entry. There have never been any great industries here 
to attract large masses of population, nor are there easily 
got treasures to be dug from the ground. The soil is thin 
and gives scant reward for tilling. 

This point of land, approximately sixty-five miles wide 
and one hundred miles deep, basks in imperturbable calm. 
Since early colonial times, life has been going on here with 
little change. The very buildings seem planted in the 
landscape, like age-old yew trees that belong to the soil. 
The people take on an air of tranquil permanency. From 
generation to generation birth and death, seedtime and har¬ 
vest, yearly meetings and revival times succeed one another 
with the regularity of the stars, and with as little commo¬ 
tion. There is no evidence of strain which frets and wears 
the nerves. There is no struggle to keep up with the neigh¬ 
bors, for the neighbors live in blissful communal peace. 

Yet this is not to say that ambition is dead. Since its 
earliest settlement, sons and daughters of this region have 
made their way to colleges and universities. They have 
sought for a life more than for a living. A man is here 
reckoned more in terms of usefulness and dependableness 
than in terms of financial or popular success. The tides of 
migration have swept round it rather than through it. Un¬ 
like their contemporaries of the state of Vermont, who 


The Virginian Inheritance 3 

heard the call of the west and sent their virile sons in an¬ 
swer, the people of tidewater Virginia aspired but did not 
travel far physically. The land has been a brooding land, 
full of mystery and touched with melancholy. The very 
skies are tinged with an azure hue that seems to be shielding 
the earth from an all too brilliant sun. Such a land and 
atmosphere have contributed much both to make and to 
feed a mystical nature. 

Yet despite its isolation it has been a land that stimu¬ 
lated its people. Essex county, together with its neighbor¬ 
ing counties, gave the nation Washington and Jefferson, 
Randolph and Madison, Marshall and Patrick Henry. 
This small area was notable for the numerous historic fig¬ 
ures born within its confines. The cherished memory of 
men who had their origin here became the goal of emula¬ 
tion for the later childhood of Virginia, who were taught 
to aspire to be like them. Sons of this region were lured 
by the very mention of their native kinsmen to high en¬ 
deavor and noble living. So it came about that a heritage 
of greatness grew to be accepted as the birthright of every 
child born in the Old Dominion. This background of 
noble tradition was an inspiring endowment bestowed 
upon each of its children. There was reason for the 
aristocracy that was Virginia. Thus it came to be that this 
brooding land was filled with an urge to aspire and to 
attain. 

More than that, it was a land that stayed put. The con¬ 
tinual migrations that emptied many states, like the richer 
commonwealth of Iowa, until they could scarcely maintain 
their population levels, never robbed this portion of Vir¬ 
ginia. The exhortation commonly attributed to Horace 
Greeley, “ Go west, young man,” might move multitudes 
elsewhere, but not here. Normally a tidewater man built 
his house and lived in it and died in it. His children dwelt 


Peter Ainslie 


4 

under the ancestral roof. People had time to live and 
think and be. Plain living and honest dealing were the 
warp and woof of its social and intellectual fabric. Even 
if poor, every home had its library. Though the books 
upon the shelves may have been few, they were good and 
they were well read. As in all colonial regions, a library 
was more than an ornament. Fortunately for the commu¬ 
nity, the deposit of its best culture remained at home. It 
enjoyed a manner of life that had its ingrowing peril, but 
also its virtues, of which stability was chief. 

Thin as was the soil and poor as were the people, Peter 
Ainslie’s community gave him something worth more than 
wealth: a gift of brooding and of aspiring. All that others 
might be encouraged to win by cleverness, the very atmos¬ 
phere of his boyhood home offered him on terms nobler, 
though costlier, if only he would be at peace with it and 
choose to aspire through it. It was here he learned “ to sit 
all night and listen ” and to be caught by the contagion of 
noble ambition. It was here he learned that goodness and 
greatness were qualities one could touch and handle in 
the daily presence of stern realities. In such a commu¬ 
nity, life impinged upon life so intimately and so perma¬ 
nently that each left an ineffaceable impression on all the 
others. Neighborliness was its proud virtue and long visits 
were characteristic. Virginia was the pit out of which 
Kentucky was digged and that state became but an exten¬ 
sion in miles and manners of its mother state. The pro¬ 
verbial hospitality of Kentuckians is but the perpetuation 
of the customs they learned “ at home.” Extending a call 
into a day and a visit into a month was typical of the life 
the original settlers knew “ back east.” The very languor 
in the atmosphere stole into the blood and made the un¬ 
hurried mood of its people. The deep calm of all this land 


The Virginian Inheritance 5 

must have contributed to the interior peace of one who 
knew its language and understood its moods. 

It is little wonder, then, that at the age of sixty-five, al¬ 
most half a century after he had left his Essex home, Peter 
Ainslie could recall the names of almost a hundred persons 
and families of his childhood environment. On the occa¬ 
sion of the one hundredth anniversary of the Dunnsville 
Christian Church, of which he had become a member in 
his childhood, he wrote a letter of greeting in which this 
astonishing list of names was set down. Characteristically, 
the list included humble people whom he held in high ap¬ 
preciation and great affection, as having contributed to his 
younger years a sense of loyalty and dependability. It was 
like him that he should have blessed the name of his Sun¬ 
day school teacher. Miss Etta Garnett; that he should have 
been able to recall the leading elder, “ who, when he rose 
to speak, fastened his eye on one spot in the building and 
never removed it until he sat down,” but whose “ goodness 
was as fixed as his gaze that he should have remembered 
the devoted brother who “ always sat in the same pew and 
leaned his head against the same spot on the wall and 
slept, so that he left a mark that was visible from all parts 
of the building.” He recalled neighbors who had helped 
his mother and who had taught him in the rural school, 
saying, “ They still live with me in happy memory.” His 
account of these companions of schooldays and of neigh¬ 
bors who farmed adjacent clearings reads like the book of 
Chronicles. 

Best of all, he spoke of colored people whose given names 
he could still remember. One of these was a servant of his 
mother whom, as a lad, he was accustomed to drive to her 
church every Sunday morning before going to his own. 
Miss Emiline McGuire, a colored woman who had been 


6 


Peter Ainslie 


baptized by Peter Ainslie’s father, was a member of his 
own church and was held in high esteem. The congrega¬ 
tion by this act of social inclusiveness made a lasting im¬ 
pression on Ainslie’s mind. He reflected that if one colored 
person could be so worthy of esteem and be so held in social 
fellowship, why could not the whole race be potentially 
worthy of it? His community thus planted in his mind 
a seed of social justice which grew and flowered into 
a veritable passion in his later life. It was this same Emi- 
line McGuire who, at the age of eighty-two, recalled Peter’s 
childhood habits: that he was “ neat in his clothing and 
never lost his temper”; that when his mother “put an 
apron on him ” and the other children taunted him about 
it and threw dirt at him he would not avenge himself; that 
occasionally he left the dresses in the woods and put them 
on again as he went home so that his mother might not 
be wounded. It was “ Miss Emiline ” whom Ainslie first 
sought out and greeted when, at fifty-seven, he returned to 
his community with his new bride. 

The character of his community was reflected in the 
biblical names given to local churches. Those immedi¬ 
ately about were called “ Smyrna,” “ Mount Zion,” “ Ephe¬ 
sus,” “ Corinth,” “ Jerusalem,” “ Antioch,” “ Bethesda.” 
This fact was indicative of the pervading religious senti¬ 
ment of the time and place, which must have given a strong 
impulse to the generation of Peter Ainslie’s childhood. 

This Virginian inheritance likewise gave him two quali¬ 
ties which added greatly to the charm and attractiveness 
of his personality. The first was his gracious yet dignified 
bearing. All that history records of the best of colonial 
life as exemplified at Williamsburg, the early capital of 
Virginia, seemed native to him. He fell heir to a stateli¬ 
ness of public address which belonged to the traditional 
glory of Virginia’s noblest period. He took to the plat- 


The Virginian Inheritance 7 

form as one to the manor born. He loved the podium as 
William Tell loved his native mountains. He succeeded 
to the forensic wealth of Virginia and carried it to new 
heights. This was particularly true of his earlier public 
life. Tall and erect, dressed in a Prince Albert coat and 
with pendant eyeglasses, he made an imposing figure as 
he stood before an audience. 

The second inheritance which his state gave him was 
his accent, a distinctly regional inflection of which he him¬ 
self was unconscious. There was an intriguing lure in the 
very flavor of his voice that would have won him favor in 
any court in the world. Whatever he had to say was doubly 
interesting because it was couched in the soft and gentle 
wooing of his Virginian tongue and supported by the best 
of an eighteenth century civility. Something of the mel¬ 
lowness of an endearing southern mammy spoke in the 
quality of his utterance. He had the best of this heritage 
without suffering its peculiar defects in the clarity of his 
language. 

This happy combination which his state and community 
bequeathed to him gave him great advantage in his public 
ministry. He could scarcely have done anything else than 
preach without doing violence to the inheritance he had 
received. He had breathed the air of public address and 
had grown up in the glamour of its appeal. These for¬ 
tuitous streams of public life and service conspired to make 
him the preacher he became. 


2 . The Contribution of the Manse 


We HAVE been looking to discover what the 
community of Peter Ainslie gave to him. It will be more 
interesting now to inquire about the measure of the con¬ 
tribution which his home life gave him. Oliver Wendell 
Holmes once said, in effect: “ If you would grow a man, 
begin a hundred years before he is born.” Peter Ainslie 
had just this background. He belonged to the third gen¬ 
eration of the manse. His grandfather and father were 
ministers before him. As a child he breathed the air of 
religion. His ancestors were not only ministers but were 
such at a time when the ministry was held in highest es¬ 
teem. The manse was the home of culture and intel¬ 
lectual excellence and the seat of moral authority and 
judgment in the community. To be born into such an in¬ 
heritance was to become heir to true ricues and to have the 
key to noble advantages put into one’s hands. The manse 
was at once the community library and the center of public 
information. The preacher was a dispenser of wide knowl¬ 
edge and a leading interpreter of the best in philosophy. 
Public regard for him did not rest upon fear or awe of 
dictatorial powers. Neither the civil authority claimed by 
the clergy of the Middle Ages nor the supremacy of revela¬ 
tion claimed by the Puritans were elements in the exalta¬ 
tion of the ministry of this period. It was recognition of 
inherent worth alone which gave to the manse its regard 
and standing in the society of men. 


8 


The Contribution of the Manse 9 

Peter Ainslie was a natural product of this quality of 
Christian priesthood. He came to the church as a homing 
pigeon to its cote. The call to the church was a voice from 
home; its language fell on understanding ears. All that 
his century cherished most, came to him as a direct inher¬ 
itance. A mentality that was being emancipated from a 
thousand years of restraint and hardness flowed into his 
thinking. The soul of courage that flowered in Luther and 
Wyclif and Hus entered into his life by direct succession. 
The rich culture of the rural pastor of Whittier’s portrait 
cast its influence over his becoming. Even the best gift of 
the manse, its poverty, was his also. Like an apostolic suc¬ 
cession, the traditions that most befit the ministry united 
to form Peter Ainslie’s heritage. 

The Ainslie name is a historic one, making its rich con¬ 
tribution to these hundred years of American history and 
to the record of the Christian church. This, then, was the 
something more than soil and climate and advantage of 
community which entered into the formation of the mind 
and spirit of the subject of this volume. It was a name 
and a tradition. The name consists of the Gaelic word 
ain, meaning a river or spring, and the Welsh word lea, 
meaning meadowland. Undoubtedly some early Ainslie 
assumed this surname from the location of his residence 
in a meadow near a stream. There is a village in Scotland 
called Ainslie. Many honored scions of the house of Ains¬ 
lie appear in English and Scottish history. In English his¬ 
tory Ainslies appear as early as the eleventh century. They 
were driven from England by William the Conqueror and 
fled to Scotland. They play a part in Scottish history for 
seven hundred years. Among those mentioned is Thomas 
de Ainslie in 1214. Sir Robert Ainslie was the English 
ambassador to Turkey in 1755. The mother of Sir Walter 


10 


Peter Ainslie 


Scott was an Ainslie, and Sir Walter held the name in such 
esteem that he had the coat of arms belonging to his 
mother’s family enshrined in the ceiling of his study. 

America has many families bearing this name widely 
distributed throughout the country, particularly along the 
Atlantic seaboard. Together with such honored families 
as the Lowells and Cabots and Adamses, we may well enter 
the Ainslie family. While they made no memorable con¬ 
tribution to the political life of this country, they did have 
a marked influence upon its moral and spiritual life and it 
may be safely claimed that they “ spoke to God ” more often 
and more intimately than even the Lowells and Cabots and 
Adamses. 

How much such a name and such a tradition may come 
to mean to those who share them is well illustrated in the 
life of the good Bishop Vincent, founder of Chautauqua. 
It is related of him that when setting out on one of his 
numerous journeys, first as a Methodist preacher and later 
as a bishop, he was accustomed to say to his boys: “ My 
sons, I want you to be good boys while I am gone. If you 
are tempted to do wrong, remember who your daddy is.” 
He shrewdly hoped that this reflection would cause them 
to hesitate before taking a false step or bringing disgrace 
upon his good name. But in the course of years he grew 
too old to carry on his former vigorous program and he 
realized that he must resign. When the time came for him 
to attend his last assembly as one of the official heads of 
his church, he departed with a heavy heart. His sons un¬ 
derstood with what sadness he faced this ordeal. On the 
day when he must give place to younger men, they had a 
happy inspiration. They sent him a telegram of encour¬ 
agement concluding with his own familiar admonition, now 
transposed: “ Remember whose daddy you are! ” For by 
this time the sons had come to a place of public favor and 


The Contribution of the Manse 11 

high esteem in their own right, and were able to reflect 
on their father something of the glory he once had shed 
on them. 

It is this quality of background that former generations 
of Ainslies bequeathed to Peter Ainslie III. It is a mark 
of advantage for a man to come from a Christian home. 
It is a mark of still greater distinction when a man can 
trace his lineage from two generations of the Christian 
manse. Such was the family inheritance of Peter Ainslie. 
It may be added without invidious comparison that he 
was doubly privileged because the manse of which he was 
an heir was Scottish. No people have more highly regarded 
the dignity and place of the preacher than have Scottish 
Christians. 

Peter Ainslie I was born in Edinburgh in 1788. He en¬ 
tered the Presbyterian Church and later became a minister 
in that communion. He was drawn to the followers of the 
Haldanes, a group holding more liberal and inclusive views 
which were particularly agreeable to his mind. They ad¬ 
vocated religious freedom and tolerance of opinion. When 
he came to America in 1811 he found no fellowship of that 
type. The Baptist Church appeared to him more hospita¬ 
ble than others; so he united with this communion, in 
which he became a distinguished preacher in Virginia. 
For a time he was a leader in the Dover Association of that 
state, but his liberal views caused him to be excommuni¬ 
cated from the association, along with six other ministers. 

Contact with the Haldane group had prepared his mind 
for the message of Thomas and Alexander Campbell, Pres¬ 
byterian ministers then preaching in western Pennsylvania. 
Later, when he became acquainted with their appeal for 
the unity of the church, he joined their adherents, then 
known as the “ Reformers,” afterwards as the “ Disciples 
of Christ.” The upright walk and humble manner of the 


12 


Peter Ainslie 


elder Peter Ainslie had given him great influence, so that 
his action was followed by a large number of his parishion¬ 
ers and admirers. His affectionate nature would not per¬ 
mit him greatly to offend others; so he never became a 
daring champion of the new views, nor could he have been 
very aggressive. But it was said of him after his expulsion 
from the Dover Association that “ on this account he was 
the most dangerous of all his associates.” Peter Ainslie I 
died in 1834. 

Recollections of him preserved by his community reveal 
the genuine concern which he felt for the underprivileged. 
Like many prominent ministers of his time, including 
Alexander Campbell, and particularly like many of his fel¬ 
low Christians, Peter Ainslie I kept slaves. One of these 
married a woman belonging to a neighbor. Later the 
neighbor sold the slave-wife to the owner of a plantation 
across the river. Seeing the grief of his servant at the sepa¬ 
ration, Peter Ainslie decided to buy the woman and bring 
her back to live in his own household. Carrying with him 
the ransom money and taking with him the husband, he 
attempted to cross the perilous Rappahannock river, then 
filled with floating ice. The boat, struck by an exceedingly 
heavy ice floe, capsized and both Ainslie and his servant 
were drowned. Six months later his body was found with 
the purchase money still in his pocket. This tragic story 
made a profound impression on the mind of young Peter. 
Both the condition of the colored people and the devotion 
that led his grandfather to lay down his life for one of them 
combined to kindle in the grandson’s mind a passion to 
better the lot of the black man and to do it at whatever cost 
his championship might entail. 

Peter Ainslie II was born in Virginia in 1816. He fol¬ 
lowed his father into the movement led by the Campbells 
and united with them in 1836. He graduated from Beth- 


THE PARENTS OF 
PETER AINSLIE 


Rebecca E. Ainslie 
Born November i1826 
Died August 4, 1904 

Peter Ainslie II 

Born December 25, 1816 
Died March 22, 1887 














































































































































The Contribution of the Manse 13 

any College, West Virginia, under the tutelage of Alexan¬ 
der Campbell. Like his father, he became a minister in the 
Campbellian movement, but unlike his father he was out¬ 
spoken in his convictions and an ardent champion of the 
Reformers’ message. He held various pastorates in the 
tidewater region but for a time served chiefly as an evange¬ 
list. In 1840 he went to Arkansas, where he was an evan¬ 
gelist for seven years. But in 1847 he returned to King and 
William county, Virginia, where he had married a southern 
gentlewoman, Rebecca Sizer, in 1839. For twenty years he 
preached in adjoining communities. He was on occasion 
little amenable to dispassionate and considerate reason and 
sometimes got into controversy with his congregations. Ex¬ 
cept for the quiet and calm disposition of his wife he might 
have been without a parish during the later years of his life. 
He disagreed with his congregation at Dunnsville and took 
his family ten miles away every Sunday to worship with 
another church. It was a full day’s journey, but it marked 
the depth of his grievance. 

Earlier in his ministry he was often invited by Alexander 
Campbell to preach in the beginning of the Disciples’ 
movement. He vigorously espoused what was then the 
“ modern ” Sunday school program, and, against strong 
opposition, he advocated receiving money from all persons 
who were interested enough to contribute, whether Chris¬ 
tians or non-Christians. On one occasion after such an 
address a dissenting clerk made this entry: “ Brother Ains- 
lie delivered an address urging upon the churches the duty 
of ‘ feeding the kids beside the shepherd’s tent,’ ” and 
added: 

Whereas the undersigned having been a member of the Rap¬ 
pahannock Church for something more than twenty-four years, 
never before having heard of any appeal or request being made 
to any other congregation of Disciples for the “ world ” to con- 


Peter Ainslie 


14 

tribute to its work for any purpose, and believing it to have 
been done in this instance in violation of any former practice 
and also in the opinion of the undersigned, in violation of the 
cardinal principles of this “ Reform,” taking from its character 
of consistency, therefore believes that it will be pernicious in 
its consequences and will sink the church to the level of the 
sects in this particular. 

Such were the strength and courage of Peter Ainslie II 
that he showed little caution in meeting the extreme con¬ 
servatism of his time. He was no docile antagonist, but 
a doughty foe of tradition who preached his gospel of lib¬ 
eralizing thought without great regard for the hesitations 
and fears of others. It is true that the antagonisms against 
which he waged battle were insignificant when compared 
with those against which Peter Ainslie III contended, but 
the matter of present moment is that the house of the Ains- 
lies maintained the protest of a liberal attitude consist¬ 
ently for one hundred years. It was a century of heroic 
advocacy of progressive ideas and of revolt against the 
shackles of enslaving tradition. 

This attitude became a habit of mind which was trans¬ 
ferred from father to son. Few indeed are the families in 
American history whose record for brave witness borne, 
and staunch support given to the right of private convic¬ 
tion, can be said to surpass that of the Ainslies. The prob¬ 
lems each Ainslie met in his time were not of equal gravity, 
but each in his generation dared to speak for the truth as 
he saw it. Possibly if each Peter Ainslie in his turn had not 
been true to whatever light he had, we should not have the 
gallant testimony of Peter Ainslie III. How much of the 
hard-won freedom of the American church, and especially 
of that portion of it known as the Disciples, is due to the 
three generations of the Ainslie ministry we can but faintly 
imagine. It is enough to know that all three consistently 


The Contribution of the Manse 15 

championed freedom of thought and action and forward- 
looking attitudes of mind. 

Peter Ainslie II built a home near Dunnsville, Virginia, 
where his younger children were born. The house still 
stands, much as it was. It must have been in its time quite 
an impressive building for that region. The gabled roof, 
with its small bedrooms, the great fireplace around which 
the family gathered in the living room, the deep basement 
where all assembled for their meals, still bear witness of a 
limited aristocracy set in simple grandeur. Behind the 
house clustered the quarters where the servants lived, and 
beyond, the cleared fields lay along the wooded hills. These 
still remain as mute reminders of a manner of life which 
has all but passed away. 

Here Peter II lived with his family and some twenty 
slaves. In holding slaves he but followed the common cus¬ 
tom of the south. Misgivings of conscience on this subject 
of slavery had as yet scarcely begun to make themselves felt. 
For that matter conscientious scruples respecting slavery 
were not a sectional virtue. Slave cemeteries are found in 
the north, but one reason why slavery did not flourish 
more widely there was because from earliest times it was 
not profitable. A few who are still living remember Peter 
Ainslie II, and recall his kindly demeanor toward his 
slaves. They were really an inheritance which grew 
through the dependent colored folk whom he took in, not¬ 
withstanding his rather limited resources. Much as we 
may now regret that any Christian minister ever held hu¬ 
man beings as chattels, it should be remembered that many 
of them looked upon the possession of slaves as a form of 
stewardship, in which the slaves accepted their protection 
and the owner served as their buffer against the vicissitudes 
of life. To such masters the idea of ownership was not 
consciously present. At least it is true that twenty slaves 


i6 


Peter Ainslie 


must have been all but exhausting to a poor preacher’s 
purse. They were retainers who lived upon their master 
and kept him perpetually poor. Their services did not 
repay the cost of their maintenance. 

Peter Ainslie II was respected by those who disagreed 
with him; they believed him to be a man of high integrity 
and of strong convictions. Like all the Reformers, he was 
a diligent student of the Bible. His generation of preach¬ 
ers, living in or near the frontier, had few aids in getting 
a clear understanding of the historic and progressive reve¬ 
lation the Scriptures contained, but they knew the text and 
could quote the Bible as few men in modern times can. 
The traditional memory of his community recalls that he 
was a preacher of rare power. He knew how to make ef¬ 
fective use of long quotations which, like all the Scriptures, 
have their weight when used by sincere men — even of 
inferior abilities. 

Altogether, eight children were born to Peter and Re¬ 
becca Ainslie. But the tragedy of the America of seventy- 
five years ago struck them severely. Mothers in those days 
were without the aid of modern science; especially were 
they without the knowledge of proper diet for their babies 
and of prenatal care for themselves. Consequently many 
small children died. That was especially true of the south, 
where the heat worked havoc. Peter Ainslie’s mother had 
been brought up surrounded by servants. Her practical 
knowledge of domestic matters was naturally limited. Five 
of her children died in early infancy. Peter was the young¬ 
est of the three who reached maturity. A brother, Charles 
H., was Peter’s senior by ten years. He, too, started in 
the ministry, but later entered business. A sister, Etta, 
seven years his senior, became his strong support in later 
years, giving him capable assistance in his writings and 
in the work of his church, and helping him to establish 



Cottage Hill 

Peter Ainslie’s birthplace and the home 
of his boyhood days 
















The Contribution of the Manse 17 

the Girls’ Working Home in Baltimore, which he organ¬ 
ized and conducted in connection with his church. This 
sister remained a member of his household until she passed 
away in 1904. Like his mother, she was the well beloved 
of a fond and devoted bachelor brother, who counted it 
his greatest joy to minister to all her needs and wants. 

The father was absent much of the time fulfilling his 
duties as an itinerant preacher, though he was never far 
away. But he could give little time to the education and 
development of his children. The mother was never ro¬ 
bust in health, but her very frailty gave her opportunity 
for a delicate ministry to a son who was similarly frail. 
Son and mother were bound together in the bonds of mu¬ 
tual intellectual and spiritual interests. By close associa¬ 
tion, as well as by desire, the child became a kind of fac¬ 
simile of his mother. As previously observed, servants 
were numerous — too numerous for the economic well¬ 
being of the family — but none of them, nor all, could 
do for the ailing mother what her sensitive son could do, 
particularly since his own earlier years had been constantly 
conditioned by frailty. The normal sports of other chil¬ 
dren were denied him. This very handicap brought him 
into still closer intimacy with his mother. Like all men 
who have accomplished something in the world and have 
maintained a spirit of self-respect and of deep gratitude, he 
had his homage to pay. Late in his life he said: “For some 
reason I have found favor with God, for not often is one 
so richly blessed as to have the sacred burden of an invalid 
mother and an invalid sister through many years. I shall 
wait in the glow of the sunset for the morning light, when 
I shall see them again.” 

The secret of this good mother’s greatness was her gen¬ 
tleness. It was of the kind that the Psalmist acknowledged: 
“ Thy gentleness, O God, hath made me great.” Always 


i8 


Peter Ainslie 


a lover of good literature and a devout and pious woman, 
she imparted to her children both a thirst for the best and 
a heritage of Christian grace. The atmosphere of the fam¬ 
ily was much like that of the early Quaker homes. Lessons 
of kindness and courtesy had first place. She planted the 
seeds of Christian attitudes in the unfolding lives of her 
children. She taught them to suppress desire for revenge 
and insisted that they return good for evil, and expected 
them to act according to her teachings in their relation¬ 
ships with other children. She drew a sharp distinction 
between revenge and spiritlessness, however. Daily she in¬ 
sisted that young Peter regard it as more important to pre¬ 
serve his dignity than to establish a reputation as a fighter. 
Such training inevitably fostered a conciliatory spirit, ready 
to manifest itself in situations that called for the courage 
of a soldier. It would have been astonishing if a child so 
brought up had not in later life become a champion of 
pacific means of adjusting controversies. 

His mother’s fondness for the delicate child caused her 
to dress him as she would have dressed a little girl. She 
even made “ protecting ” aprons for him to wear over his 
school apparel — a fact which sometimes tempted his 
schoolmates to copy the trick of Joseph’s brethren, namely, 
cast him into the ditch. Peter Ainslie the man did not 
hesitate to acknowledge that this experience had a vital 
effect upon his moral growth. His mother’s restraining 
hand held him back from the expression of many an early 
impulse to avenge himself. He said of her: “ My mother 
laid constantly upon my heart this teaching of Jesus when 
I was a mere boy, that forgiveness is the first qualification 
in the discipleship of Jesus. It radiated from her as well 
throughout our village life.” 

Those of his childhood friends who still survive marvel 
as they recall that the boy never fought back when he was 


The Contribution of the Manse 19 

roughly treated. Something of his lifelong inner superior¬ 
ity marked him even then. How much of it was due to 
pride that would not stoop to the bully’s manner, how 
much to what later became a strong inclination to non- 
resistance against violence, the reader may decide for him¬ 
self. There was in him something that would not let him 
sully his hands with the dirt of low conduct. Whether it 
was his Virginian aristocracy or his Christian conviction 
or both that made him so inoffensive as a lad we cannot 
fully know. Doubtless it was a blend of the two. 

The literary habits of Peter Ainslie’s life were fixed early. 
The companionship of good books, the habit of church¬ 
going, and the “ sitting ” in the front pew where in child¬ 
hood he was accustomed to sleep, made their slow but cer¬ 
tain contribution to the texture of his mind and spirit. 
The closely knit family circle, with its “ other member,” 
Miss Emiline McGuire, lifelong servant in the home, to¬ 
gether with the constant influence of his Sunday school 
teacher, Miss Etta Garnett, and his rural schoolteacher, Mr. 
John Hunley, constituted the intellectual and social and 
moral world in which he grew up spiritually strong and 
tall. 

Strangely enough, the very poverty of his home gave 
wings to his imagination. He did not come to man’s estate 
by dint of hard labor, as did most great Americans whom 
we memorialize. This he could not do. But his isolated 
environment, with its scarcity of outside appeals, had to be 
compensated for by the creative impulses within his own 
mind. Of his early home he said: 

My cottage home gave me many advantages. My father had 
a good library for a village minister - about five hundred vol¬ 
umes. Being a delicate boy and having to remain in the house 
a good deal, I had an unusual opportunity to read. My mother 
required me to read or to be read to every day. I was never 


20 


Peter Ainslie 


restricted in my choice of reading, but I could not go very far 
wrong in reading any of the five hundred books, which I knew 
well enough to select any one of them in the dark. 

On long winter evenings we would gather around the open 
fire. My father would be seated on one side of the table; on 
the other side would be my mother, my sister and myself. 
There we sat for hours reading. When bedtime came we 
would have to tell what we had read. The character which we 
discussed became as real as our neighbors. In the long sum¬ 
mer days I would sit in the shade of a tree or throw myself on 
the ground and read for hours. 

Here he absorbed Shakespeare and Emerson and, 
strangely enough, all he could find on the life of Napoleon. 
He said: 

Like most boys, I was thrilled by stories of war and the mili¬ 
tary tactics of great warriors. I used to sit for hours listening 
to stories of the Civil War. I read Headley’s Napoleon and His 
Marshals so constantly that I knew it almost by heart. His 
Table Talks furnished many aphorisms that I can never for¬ 
get. . . . Every life I could buy or borrow on Napoleon and 
his marshals I eagerly read. I was thoroughly familiar with his 
great battles. For a time I included his name for my middle 
name. Some years after, when I visited his tomb in the Hotel 
des Invalides in Paris, it was like visiting the tomb of an old 
friend. 

One can but smile at the strange anomaly if the Peter 
Ainslie that his generation came to know had become per¬ 
manently named Peter Napoleon Ainslie. 

But his admiration of the Little Corporal waned. Pres¬ 
ently he began to contemplate the results of Napoleon’s 
wars: how they cut short the physical stature of Frenchmen 
by three inches; how they left scars that have never healed; 
how they were the precursors of other wars; how they were 
everywhere followed by disease and poverty and death, 
“ covered up with uniforms and brass buttons and labeled 
patriotism.” In later life Ainslie observed of Napoleon: 


The Contribution of the Manse 21 

“ His brilliant military tactics amazed the world, and still 
have a charm to some, but that which impressed me most 
was the inability of the sword to settle things.” 

A little later in his boyhood he came upon the writings 
of Tolstoy and these completed his conversion to the prin¬ 
ciple of peace as alone holding the key to the well-being 
and prosperity of mankind. Indeed, it was the absorbing 
personality of Leo Tolstoy, swimming into his ken in his 
unfolding years, that most powerfully affected the later life 
and thinking of Peter Ainslie. The union in Tolstoy of 
the soldier’s courage and the shepherd’s gentleness made 
a strong appeal to young Peter. Something of the quality 
of the great Russian found in him a responsive and kindred 
chord. That this early warrior should have deserted the 
path of Napoleon, broken his colonel’s sword and, with a 
daring no soldier ever knew, championed the pathway of 
peace for men and nations on the basis of nonresistance, 
caught the imagination and the allegiance of Peter Ainslie’s 
whole being. At last he had found the best of Emerson 
and of Napoleon combined in one man, held together by 
the strong bonds of the beatitudes of peace. 

It was the influence of Tolstoy’s writings also that re¬ 
leased young Ainslie’s mind from orthodox thinking on 
social problems. The glory of Napoleon lost its glamour 
for him because this Russian nobleman had set him on a 
new path of inquiry and interest. Thereafter, he said, “ I 
had no further difficulty in finding my way to what seemed 
to me a finer standard in international affairs. I decided 
to denounce war, nor would I have anything to do with 
war under any circumstances, even though my country be¬ 
came involved in one.” 

Such was the development of his youthful mind in what 
was and is a setting of primitive beauty, though it was one 
of humble but proud poverty. If that meaningful phrase, 


22 


Peter Ainslie 


“ We climb on a ladder of created souls,” was ever true in 
human experience, then Peter Ainslie’s unfolding is one 
of its best illustrations. He said: “ I was taught to think 
in the sphere of the universal and to claim in my kinship 
all good men irrespective of their nationality, politics or 
theology. Out of such training, which was a university in 
itself, I learned to be open-minded.” 

But it was the influence of his mother that led him to 
choose the ministry for his career. Peter Ainslie discovered 
his passion for preaching under her gentle persuasion. She 
called him “ my preacher.” To this appeal was added the 
benign influence of a devoted aunt to whom he was a 
“ son ” until her death. He grew up a protected child in 
a rural manse, yet he was always under an unresting com¬ 
pulsion that this one thing he must do. He was constantly 
reminded that before his birth the family kept eagerly 
asking, “ When is Little Moses to arrive? ” At his birth 
the old mammy shouted to the neighbors, “ Little Moses 
done come! ” 

Old neighbors remember the spot at the edge of the 
woods near his Dunnsville home whither as a mere boy he 
went every day to “ preach ” — a Wordsworthian setting, 
still untouched, an open spot surrounded by tall trees, si¬ 
lent willing auditors, together with singing birds and flying 
clouds and sheltered beasts. Here Peter Ainslie learned to 
lift up his voice and to be unafraid of its sound. It was his 
mother who sent him there. She had put into his mind 
the idea of preaching, and now she sent him to the quiet 
of the woods to learn how to preach. 

What youth could escape such persuasion even if he 
were so minded? Quite normally and naturally “ Little 
Moses” became a member of the church at ten years of 
age. He was baptized in Essex lake by the village mill to 
which for a hundred years the families of his community 


The Contribution of the Manse 23 

had been accustomed to go for their weekly grist of meal 
and flour. 

We cannot turn away from this consideration of the con¬ 
tribution of the community and home life of Peter Ainslie 
to what he was and what he did in later years, without re¬ 
flecting upon the quality of life which that simple environ¬ 
ment could produce. One wonders whether the competi¬ 
tors for time and energy and ambition which so complicate 
our modern civilization can ever equal the stimulation of 
such unmixed motives and simple influences as beat upon 
this young life in that modest and remote corner of the 
New World. 


5 . The Seminary Years 


THE Christian manse has proverbially beaten 
a path to the academy and the college and the university. 
The plain living and high thinking which ordinarily be¬ 
longed to the life of the manse in former days, both built 
colleges and filled them with its sons and daughters. Min¬ 
isters lured their children to seek the greater knowledge 
waiting to be discovered beyond the boundaries of home. 
This experience was reproduced in the life of Peter Ainslie. 
The five hundred volumes in his fathers library, the quick¬ 
ening conversation about the hearth, the deep family in¬ 
terest in the life of the world outside, combined to set the 
mind of young Peter on fire to find other teachers and 
wider knowledge than his childhood home could afford. 
He must go to college. 

In that generation the church college was considered the 
most logical place for a young Christian to be sent. Par¬ 
ents felt their children would find there Christian compan¬ 
ions and Christian teachers who would influence them 
more than all books and libraries. They expected such 
institutions to supply an atmosphere that was morally 
wholesome and uplifting and free from the “ atheistic ” in¬ 
fluences which might be encountered in other academic cir¬ 
cles. Since Peter was planning to be a minister, it was 
most natural that he should seek some such center in which 
ministers were made. 

The early colleges of America were established largely 
by Christian men and women. Inasmuch as the earliest 

24 


The Seminary Years 


25 

and strongest of American traditions was the separation 
of church and state, there was neither a desire to appeal 
for public taxes to build Christian institutions, nor any 
likelihood that a favorable response would have been ac¬ 
corded such a request. The only means of recruiting and 
preparing a ministry was to establish and endow academic 
centers where the courses taught and the influence exerted 
could be controlled by Christian people. There was as 
yet among the struggling and contending communions no 
general spirit of cooperation or of unity that could per¬ 
suade them to establish union seminaries. Consequently 
each denomination founded its own colleges, with the de¬ 
liberate purpose of making them centers for propagating 
the views of the Bible and of the Christian faith peculiar 
to their founders. The idea of ecumenicity, as it is now 
conceived, had not entered into the mind of the frontier 
church. 

The Disciples along with other communions established 
such colleges throughout America as far as their movement 
had spread and their ability permitted. The first was 
founded by Alexander Campbell at Bethany, West Vir¬ 
ginia, in 1841. This institution was essentially a place for 
equipping and inspiring young preachers. High academic 
standing was not its primary aim. 

As the Disciples grew and spread, they established new 
colleges in their more thickly settled centers of population. 
Among these was the College of the Bible at Lexington, 
Kentucky, which was later affiliated with Transylvania 
University. The history of the two institutions is some¬ 
what involved. Transylvania Academy was the first edu¬ 
cational institution established west of the Alleghenies. 
Later Bacon College was located at the same place and 
presently merged with the academy. The outgrowth of 
this merger was an educational institution called Kentucky 


26 


Peter Ainslie 


University, which in time came under the control of the 
Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), whose members 
contributed large sums for its endowment. Apart from the 
university a new school was established called the College 
of the Bible, a separate institution, though its students had 
the privilege of attending classes at, and graduating from, 
the university. When the legislature of Kentucky estab¬ 
lished at Lexington a college which was later called the 
University of Kentucky, the curators of Kentucky Univer¬ 
sity, in order to avoid confusion, changed the name of that 
institution to Transylvania University. 

Young Ainslie followed the traditions of his family and 
of his communion in selecting Transylvania and its asso¬ 
ciated College of the Bible as the second home of his men¬ 
tal and spiritual growth. He entered college in October 
1888. Here he found a later edition of Virginia in its 
temper and culture. By its architecture, as by its man¬ 
ners, it was a transplanted facsimile of its elder sister. The 
sense of tranquillity and of inbred hospitality had been 
carried to its campus. Ainslie senior, being a minister in 
the “ Reformation,” knew of Transylvania and had talked 
much of its famous president, John W. McGarvey. Nor 
was President McGarvey unaware of the coming of young 
Peter. He knew Peter Ainslie II to be a staunch Reformer, 
and welcomed his son to the campus as a child of his own. 

Professor McGarvey, as he was affectionately called, was 
in every way a remarkable man, but he was preeminently 
a teacher. He could put his material into such simple lan¬ 
guage and express it in such a logical and convincing man¬ 
ner that it was unforgettable. The tendency of his teach¬ 
ing was to fashion the mental processes of his students as 
surely as a sculptor shapes his marble. Those who remem¬ 
ber his manner of teaching unitedly join in declaring their 
high appreciation of his capacity to make his ideas clear 


The Seminary Years 


27 

and unforgettable. It is their general testimony that more 
than any other man they remember he presented his ideas 
in a manner that made it difficult to escape them. The 
Honorable Joab H. Banton, one of his pupils and a class¬ 
mate of Peter Ainslie’s, wrote of him: 

Had John W. McGarvey become a lawyer, he would have 
been one of the greatest lawyers of his time. He had a faculty 
for ascertaining the facts regarding any case or question and 
being able to marshal these facts in such a manner as to bring 
a firm conviction of the justness of his cause. He was a legalist 
and a mathematician. McGarvey had a legal mind. It was 
hard for anyone of the spiritual type of Ainslie to adopt Mc- 
Garvey’s thought and accept his conclusions. The same diffi¬ 
culty lay in the mind of James Lane Allen, a classmate of mine. 
Hence, he was shocked at the legal tendency of McGarvey. 
This tendency never shocked me. Fortunately, I was bom and 
trained to be a lawyer and my mind always ran in legal chan¬ 
nels. Therefore, I was able to appreciate John W. McGarvey. 
Had I gone to a school with atheistic tendencies, I probably 
would have wound up either an agnostic or an atheist. I fin¬ 
ished college with a firm faith which I owe to John W. Mc¬ 
Garvey. 

McGarvey had strong convictions from which he was not 
easily moved. He was a true child of the “ Reformation.” 
He believed that the brotherhood of the Disciples had 
come to the Kingdom “ for such a time as this.” He held 
his views so tenaciously that, unconsciously, he often made 
preachers in his own image, embryo McGarveys, as im¬ 
movable as their teacher in their assurance of what consti¬ 
tuted the truth. Like many another strong man, he was a 
combination of two dissident qualities. On the one hand 
he was possessed of the gentlest and sweetest of natures 
whose high quality was equaled only by the clarity of 
his utterances; on the other, he was inclined to be intoler¬ 
ant of a differing point of biblical interpretation. His 
devotion to the Bible amounted to a worship of “ the 


28 


Peter Ainslie 


Book.” A man of extraordinary tenderness and kindliness, 
he could be transformed into a veritable warrior when he 
encountered what seemed to him disloyalty to the text of 
Holy Scripture. When “ higher criticism ” appeared it 
was to him a particular enemy of the Christian faith. Like 
another Samson, he fell upon all such interpreters of whom 
he heard and “ smote them hip and thigh.” Like so many 
strong minds, he grew more conservative toward the end 
of his life. During these years he sent out capable students 
into the contemporary theological Canaan, to bring back 
reports which he might contradict. These embassies were 
not so much to learn new truth to be shared as to discover 
sources of “ destructive criticism ” to be combatted, to 
bring information concerning “ errors ” to be refuted. 

President McGarvey had associated with himself on the 
faculty of the College of the Bible other strong minds, 
scarcely less capable than his own in their ability to set 
forth their ideas in simple, lucid and effective style. The 
combination of such a company of honored successors of 
the Campbells drew young men from all areas where Dis¬ 
ciples were established. Transylvania, in fact, constituted 
a theological mecca for young men of this movement who 
were looking toward the ministry. Here were gathered 
some of the most distinguished minds of the Disciples of 
Christ of that generation. Among them were Professor 
Charles Louis Loos, Professor I. B. Grubbs and Professor 
Robert Graham, though none of them was equal in per¬ 
suasive and compelling power of statement to Professor 
McGarvey. 

For thirty years this great man and his faculty took the 
pliable material of Disciple youth that came to their hands 
and hammered it into trumpets of “ the Plea.” * They 

* “ The Plea ” is a term used widely among the Disciples, and the 
reader will often come upon it in this volume. It originated in the appeal 


29 


The Seminary Years 

filled their long generation with men who went out across 
the new west as flaming evangelists of the “ Plan of Salva¬ 
tion,” convinced that they had found an adequate and 
authoritative formula by which men could find salvation, 
and so build the true Church of Christ. Happily these 
capable teachers could not create permanent reproductions 
of themselves. But they could and did bequeath a desire 
for simplicity of interpretation of the New Testament, and 
a faith in its Christ and in the church which they believed 
it clearly outlined. The more self-dependent minds among 
their students held to the essence of these teachings, but 
eventually released themselves from the bonds of the more 
rigid conclusions. But the tendency among more docile 
minds was to become dogmatic. 

Into this battleground came young Peter Ainslie. He 
was strange material for the doughty Thor, McGarvey. In 
spite of his sensitive spirit and irenic soul, his believing 
nature was prepared, both by the reputation of his teachers 
and by their sureness concerning the truths of the “ Refor¬ 
mation,” to accept the interpretations offered him as final 
pronouncements of biblical truth. In Professor McGarvey 
he found the soul of conviction and an incarnation of the 
crusader type. So trusting a spirit as Ainslie could not but 
be deeply moved by such a robust interpreter of the move¬ 
ment of his fathers. His whole being bowed before this 
man of genuine worth and unyielding certainty. The basic 


for the unity of the church. The Reformers believed that the only authori¬ 
tative basis for such unity was to be found in the restoration of the New 
Testament church. Rev. Walter Scott, a colleague of Alexander Campbell, 
was the first to use the phrase, “ the Plan of Salvation,” as meaning the 
steps necessary to conversion. As he set them forth they were: Faith, 
Repentance, Confession, Baptism. The “ Plea ” was at first a passion, then 
it inclined toward a doctrine, and, by usage, came in the minds of many 
to mean a “ scheme ” of redemption. As in all spiritual movements, the 
“ Plea ” tended to become confused with the “ Plan.” 



Peter Ainslie 


30 

principle of his teachings implied an unquestioning ac¬ 
ceptance of the letter of the law. Professor McGarvey was 
not a fundamentalist, but he was a legalist. His method 
of treatment of Scripture fastened upon the mind of young 
Ainslie for many years. As he himself wrote later: 

When I started upon my preparation for the ministry at 
nineteen years of age, the verbal and moral theories of the in¬ 
spiration of the Scriptures were having a struggle for the right 
of way. My college was on the side of the former. I followed 
my college in its thinking and became a legalist and with that 
attitude of mind I entered upon my ministry. 

It was Ainslie’s attachment to the authority of the let¬ 
ter which prepared him to accept, for a considerable pe¬ 
riod, the odd divergence of premillennialism, as we shall 
later discover. (The premillennial view was held by not 
a few pioneer preachers and it made a strong appeal to 
pious and tractable minds.) He came to advocate the 
conception of the second coming of Christ in physical form, 
because that seemed the evident teaching of the apostle 
Paul. However, he began soon to distrust finalities, espe¬ 
cially those which made for unbrotherliness. His nature 
revolted against barriers which shut out others from divine 
privileges even though for a time his mind assented to 
“ chapter and verse ” authority which seemed to erect such 
barriers. 

Ainslie’s college companions recall little about his ex¬ 
ternal reaction to his tutelage except to say that he was 
“ different ” from others in the spirit of his relations with 
fellow students. Having never been robust, he took little 
part in the normal athletic life of the campus or in its social 
activities, save debating. He entered zealously into his 
studies. His classmates had a general impression “ that 
he applied himself seriously to the task of becoming fit for 
the ministry.” Young Ainslie actually began that ministry 


The Seminary Years 31 

during his college days, since young men preparing to 
preach, in that period, were encouraged to begin preach¬ 
ing as soon as any congregation was willing to hear them. 
The practice was based on the famous phrase borrowed 
from contemporary politics, that “ the way to resume is to 
resume.” Ainslie preached according to the best tradi¬ 
tion of the Disciples and became a capable pleader for 
the Plea. All that can be learned or recalled about his 
early preaching is that he accepted Professor McGarvey’s 
teachings, though he never accepted his method and spirit 
of propagating them. He himself later wrote of his alma 
mater: 

There was a denominational atmosphere there, more or less, 
as in all similar colleges. It was a college of a denomination 
and a denominational atmosphere was inevitable. At first I 
resented this, but I had sense enough to know that a fellow in 
his teens should suppress his mental fermentations; besides, 
everything was so pleasant that it looked unappreciative to be 
protesting. Unconsciously, however, I yielded little by little 
until by my third year I was a thorough denominationalist. 
I did not recover for the next fifteen or twenty years. 

That is what a denominational college did for a young man 
like me preparing for the ministry, and I was an average young 
man. If my parents had been of any other of America’s two 
hundred and fifteen denominations the likelihood is that the 
result would have been the same: I might have come out a 
Catholic priest, or a Southern Baptist preacher. Some escape 
and retain their freedom, but that number is small in compari¬ 
son with the great number of ministerial students who come 
out with a definite attitude toward other Christians, not so 
friendly necessarily as with those of the same denomination, 
perhaps even definitely unfriendly, depending upon which de¬ 
nominational factory got the raw material. These perpetuate 
the scandal of division as a sacred trust. 

He was soon in the apostolic constraint — betwixt two 
minds. On the one hand all that he was being taught fitted 
well into his heredity and training. On the other hand 


Peter Ainslie 


32 

he felt that the method and spirit of what he had earlier 
learned were at variance with the “ truth ” being taught 
by his professors. His college days were never at ease. 
While still under the spell of so good and so great a man 
as Professor McGarvey he was never able to detach him¬ 
self from the professor’s engaging mind. Only as maturing 
years gave him immunity from any imputation of irrever¬ 
ence for his teacher did he come to distinguish between 
the letter and the spirit of revelation. By his own reason¬ 
ing, he came to share in what was not then discussed in 
his circle — the “ historic ” approach. One of the severe 
wrenches of his life came through a conviction that obliged 
him to choose between his sense of indebtedness to the 
teachers of the College of the Bible and the new under¬ 
standing for which he was debtor to friends of wider hori¬ 
zon. 

The period of Ainslie’s early ministry was an epoch of 
intense propagation of the Plea. It was an energetic, an 
evangelistic age, when enthusiasm for the growth of mem¬ 
bership in the communion outran devotion to the cause 
of Christian unity, which had given to the movement its 
original impulse. This passion for unity became for a 
time obscured by a passion for the “ correctness ” of the 
process of becoming a Christian. 

But as we shall find in other emergencies of Ainslie’s life, 
he had a process of his own which delivered him from legal¬ 
istic chains. Experience was his university. He accepted 
the pragmatic test; namely, what worked well was good, 
what would not work was false. He later said concerning 
legalism: “ When I got disturbed over social or theological 
problems I established the method of reading the New 
Testament through on the point in question, and later 
of reading the Synoptic Gospels chiefly. It was thus that 
I usually came out on the right side of the problem.” 


The Seminary Years 


33 

His emancipation seems still more remarkable when we 
remember that it was out of a home holding like-minded 
views and conceptions that young Ainslie had come. The 
essential difference was that his home was steeped in an at¬ 
mosphere of liberty, of freedom to go wherever truth might 
lead. Professor McGarvey, on the contrary, assumed that 
he had arrived at the truth, in so far as conversion and the 
outlines of the church were concerned. To be a good stu¬ 
dent under such a teacher was to listen and remember well. 
This Peter Ainslie could not do. Another teacher had 
been at work on him before Professor McGarvey and his 
associates had become the preceptors of his unfolding years. 
This was none other than his mother. She too had loved 
truth, but she loved love more. The way of truth might 
not always be clear, but the way of love was. She taught 
her son to follow that. When therefore love conflicted 
with the truth, he knew that this was not the whole truth, 
that he must seek elsewhere to find it. Thus he had the 
clue to ultimate reality; thus he had found the road to the 
fuller facts of revelation. He did not have time in his 
brief life to seek them out to the end in any particular, 
but he had the chart and the compass and was well on 
his way when he was summoned into the eternal light. 


4. The Early Ministry 


DoGGED by continual ill health, Peter Ains- 
lie left college in May 1891 without graduating. Notwith¬ 
standing this disappointment he was undiscouraged. He 
had set his mind on having a pulpit of his own. Like St. 
Paul, he desired to labor where no man had labored. He 
wanted to build on his own foundation. He could not 
see himself fitted into another man’s armor or into an¬ 
other man’s work. 

After a period of recuperation and reflection, he began 
to take account of the invitations which had come to him 
while in “ retreat.” His gifts as a preacher and his family 
connections had already made him widely known in his 
communion, so he had many flattering offers. Since he 
was tall and handsome and possessed a winsome personal¬ 
ity, made more appealing by a deeply spiritual nature, he 
was not without opportunity to preach. But he was not 
moved to accept what seemed the most alluring field that 
opened to him. He conceived his ministry to be a labo¬ 
ratory where he could adventure in spiritual explorations, 
believing that an experimenter must have freedom. He 
turned away from more flattering pulpits and from se¬ 
curely established churches. 

While yet a student he had planned to enter the service 
of the foreign mission field and to offer himself for some 
“ hard place ” in the world. Because of his uncertain 
health he was dissuaded from this by the advice of his col¬ 
lege president. He then turned to the home field and to 

34 


The Early Ministry 


35 

its more difficult aspects. Since he had rejected the idea 
of a “ made ” pulpit he surveyed the openings which 
seemed to offer the largest opportunities along with the 
most hazardous chances of success. 

Among these was one in Baltimore, Maryland. A small 
church of the Disciples, the Calhoun Christian Church, 
had been organized there and was already in great distress. 
Its handful of members had fallen out among themselves. 
It had neither social prestige nor the repute of good works. 
But Baltimore appealed to Ainslie for personal reasons. 
It was not far from his mother and his sister, who lived on 
the farm along the Rappahannock river. Theirs was a 
lonely life. He could visit them often if he were in Balti¬ 
more and he hoped later to make a home for them. More¬ 
over, Johns Hopkins University was in Baltimore and it 
would afford him opportunity for further study. Most 
appealing of all, Baltimore was a difficult field and one 
in which he could adventure without too great loss if he 
should fail. 

In October 1891 Peter Ainslie preached his first sermon 
in that little mission church. His salary was eight hundred 
dollars per year, with no guarantee of getting it regularly 
and with little hope that it would ever be fully paid. His 
congregation numbered fewer than fifty, none of them 
conspicuous in the life of the city. Neither he nor his 
people had influential friends or important contacts. In 
addition, the church was poorly located. Worst of all, it 
was greatly in debt and deeply divided in opinion. 

There was, too, the unfriendly environment. Disciples 
were few on the Atlantic seaboard, for in the earlier pe¬ 
riod of their expansion many had followed the westward 
course of empire. Moreover, Baltimore was a non-Protes¬ 
tant city, the seat of a Roman Catholic cardinalate. Still 
more, it was a city of fixed social habits where minds were 


Peter Ainslie 


3 6 

not easily changed and where newness had scant welcome. 
Such Protestant churches as were there were historic and 
well known. Even these found it difficult to expand in 
such stolid surroundings. Ainslie had few accessions to his 
church from the Disciples at any period of his ministry; 
he had to depend almost wholly upon converts made 
through personal contacts, or on members of other com¬ 
munions who wished to join a fellowship they felt to be 
more congenial. 

It would seem that any one of these forbidding draw¬ 
backs would have deterred a less daring soul. If Ainslie 
had been only one more preacher, Baltimore would never 
have heard of him. But he was not just one more; he was, 
as he called himself, an “ experimenter.” Despite the pro¬ 
test of many friends and those who already had high hope 
of what he might ultimately attain, he embarked on this 
unpromising venture. He was twenty-four years old and 
he felt he had a full lifetime ahead of him in which to 
prove his ideas. He was eager to begin, but he was not 
deceived about the length of time it might take to make 
such proof. He had set down some principles to guide his 
ministry: 

1. I will meet my problems courageously, leaving the re¬ 
sults of my labors as matters between God and me, rather than 
between the people and me; consequently, I shall always try 
to be hopeful. 

2. I will cultivate my kinship with all peoples, irrespective 
of race, religion, politics or social conditions; consequently, I 
shall always try to be friendly. 

3. I will remember that my time at most is short and that 
there is much to be done in helping to redeem the world; con¬ 
sequently, I shall always try to be industrious. 

4. I will be free in my search for truth, not tying myself to 
any special system of philosophy or theology; but I will read 
freely what others have written and listen to what others say; 
consequently, I shall always try to be open-minded. 


The Early Ministry 


37 

5. I will be indifferent to adverse criticism of myself, how¬ 
ever cutting it may be, other than to profit by it if it is true, or 
leave it to die if untrue; consequently, I shall always try to be 
patient. 

6. I will be careful regarding money, not only making in¬ 
terest in it secondary to my interest in people, but I will so 
conduct my own finances as to make my method commendable 
to others, always living within my income and paying my debts; 
consequently, I shall always try to be economical. 

7. I will serve the people, both saints and sinners, rich and 
poor, educated and ignorant, and if I must choose between the 
two, my choice must be to the poor and ignorant; consequently, 
I shall always try to go to the one who needs me most. 

8. I will treat others as I would have others treat me, and 
should others violate this principle by some antagonistic con¬ 
duct toward me, I will endeavor to be patient at first and then, 
if conditions justify, I will forbid further encroachments; con¬ 
sequently, I shall always try to prevent others from unneces¬ 
sarily bothering me by encroaching on me. 

9. I will keep alive in my heart the desire to live in the spirit 
of Christ. I shall always try even to be ashamed of repentance 
toward God and apologies to others. 

With such high ideals to begin his ministry, he decided 
to forget numbers or any idea of building a big church. 
He said he had observed that when men began to count 
the people, the figures obscured the spiritual ends for 
which they should have been set. He would have agreed 
heartily with the lamented Sylvester Horne of London, 
who one Sunday morning discovered a reporter counting 
the members of his church as they went out. Mr. Horne 
laconically suggested, “ Do not count those who do not 
count.” Yet Ainslie gave himself with abandon to win 
new converts and to broaden the base of his ministry. At 
that time he began saying a prayer which he repeated 
“ thousands ” of times later in his life: “ O God, let me be 
forgot, but let this thing be done in the name of the Lord 
Jesus.” 


Peter Ainslie 


38 

He began his work in the mission church with a deter¬ 
mination that his pews should not be empty. He inaugu¬ 
rated it with a campaign of publicity in printer’s ink, a 
course which he followed for many years. Hand bills were 
generously used. From week to week the young minister 
distributed them with his own hands. Once a policeman, 
seeing him nail the bills to telephone poles, rebuked him 
roundly for damaging the property of the public utilities 
company. Later, when he had audiences that taxed his 
building, this same officer was assigned to prevent acci¬ 
dent or injury in the milling crowds that sought entrance. 
Ainslie held annual evangelistic meetings, conducting 
many of them himself. 

Peter Ainslie’s characteristic venturesomeness became 
apparent early in his ministry. At first he showed the 
greatest consideration for the judgment of the office-bearers 
of his church, never leaving town without informing them. 
But as his grasp of the situation grew more secure, he sug¬ 
gested that they all resign, leaving him free to select such 
persons as he might choose as likely to give more capable 
service. Indeed his mastery over his congregation grew 
until later, in an unhappy situation in his church, he asked 
his elders to resign. Such high-handed tactics could have 
had the consent only of a congregation that had come to 
love and trust their minister because of his singleness of 
mind and his devotion to the church. His example in this 
respect could not be followed by other pastors unless they 
had won the same esteem from their people. 

He dared to do what has broken many a minister’s heart 
and back: he asked to be made president of the Ladies’ Aid 
Society for their annual bazaar. He had an ulterior mo¬ 
tive. He did not like bazaars and thought the church’s 
energies were consumed with much ado about nothing in 
giving dinners. Church support should come out of the 


The Early Ministry 


39 

generosity of the heart. He used his opportunity to keep 
a detailed record of every activity connected with the 
bazaar and of all monies received and expended. In due 
time he gave his congregation a complete report, includ¬ 
ing a number of petty incidents he had witnessed in the 
course of his presidency. It was enough. Bazaars were 
done for in his church. 

Early in his ministry he began publishing a weekly reli¬ 
gious journal which he continued for six years. His origi¬ 
nal intention was to make it a means for propagating the 
message of the Disciples in the east. But to his credit it 
should be said that he mainly educated himself in the proc¬ 
ess. While presuming to enlighten other Christians on 
their incomplete discipleship, he came to see that being 
a propagandist makes for sectarianism. In later years, he 
confessed, “ Being an editor intensified my denomination- 
alism,” and added frankly, “ Denominational editorship 
usually does that.” 

The early years of his ministry however were marked by 
a vigorous evangelism with a denominational outlook. As 
Dr. William Adams Brown said, “ I think he could have 
become a doughty denominationalist.” He was just that 
during the first period of his preaching. However, he lived 
to repent of it and to confess, “ My early ministry was char¬ 
acterized at times by strongly denominational preaching 
marked by caustic criticism of which I am now ashamed.” 
But he did make converts and his handful of fifty grew to 
be a hundred, then two hundred, three hundred, five hun¬ 
dred, a thousand. His little building was crowded. 

But his path during these years was not altogether 
smooth. The Calhoun Christian Church had gone 
through some internal dissensions and was destined to pass 
through more. At the beginning of the new pastorate all 
went well. Harmony seemed to have settled at last over 


Peter Ainslie 


40 

this turbulent flock. Ainslie confidently believed he had 
entered on a ministry destined to be happy, and had ex¬ 
pectation of permanent tranquillity. But he had yet to 
go through his fires of discipline. He was to learn by expe¬ 
rience that preachers are not made in Eden but must fight 
Apollyon before they can enter into the city celestial of 
pastoral blessedness. Here as everywhere he was to discover 
that “ there are many adversaries.” The congregation 
broke into more open contention and soon fell into deep 
discouragement; officials of the church even counseled giv¬ 
ing up the effort. 

All of this induced a return of Ainslie’s earlier illness and 
within the first year he had to retire for months. On his 
return the responsible leaders of his congregation sug¬ 
gested that the work be closed. He replied by asking for 
the resignation of these officers and requesting the congre¬ 
gation to elect a new board. Thus he got rid both of the 
spirit of defeatism and of inefficiency. 

This period of the ministry of Peter Ainslie was after the 
“ most strict of the Pharisees ” so far as zeal for the Plea of 
the Disciples was concerned. Many of his sermon-notes 
and addresses of that period remain as witnesses to his most 
ardent convictions on the theory of conversion with its pur¬ 
pose and place of baptism. A sense of the importance of 
the name “ Christian ” and the weekly observance of the 
Lord’s Supper overwhelmed his mind. This was, he felt, 
the most important message for the world. That he 
preached it correctly after the manner of the fathers did not 
imply that he manifested a hard or proselyting spirit. An 
innate grace saved him from that unfraternal exhibition so 
common to zealots. Like Saul of Tarsus he could not be¬ 
lieve anything half-heartedly. What he espoused at any 
period of his life was to him for that time the all-consuming 
will of God. If the total effect of his earlier ministry was 


The Early Ministry 41 

inhospitable and sectarian it was due to his intense passion 
for the truth as he saw it. There are those who think of 
his crusading years with their championship of the dis¬ 
tinctive message and practice of the Disciples as contradic¬ 
tory to his later ministry of reconciliation. He would be 
the first to admit this charge. One can but protest that if 
he had not shown this measure of enthusiasm for what he 
then believed to be most vital, he would never have be¬ 
come the flaming prophet of reconciliation he was in his 
later years. As he was stout in his loyalty to truth as he 
saw it at one period, so was he strong in his later advocacy of 
a more tolerant message. In this, however, did he differ 
from other equally loyal proponents of the Plea, that he 
learned by what he saw and shared; namely, that Christian 
unity must be predicated on the fact that there are other 
Christians with whom to unite. 


5 . The Christian Temple 

The Lengthened Shadow 

In 1902, eleven years after the beginning of 
his ministry, Peter Ainslie found himself on the threshold 
of fulfillment of a long cherished dream. His influence 
had grown until his little church could not hold the crowds 
who came to his services. A new and larger church seemed 
a necessity. Both because of improving health and because 
he had overcome the earlier congregational difficulties 
which for so long had plagued his endeavors, Ainslie was 
now able to undertake the task. He had no wealthy people 
in his congregation, but he had faith and he inspired faith 
in his people. He bought a corner lot and began building, 
a small section at a time, as funds were available. 

Such was the beginning of the Christian Temple (its 
name was suggested by one of Ainslie’s devoted parishion¬ 
ers, Mr. Walter Lane). The Temple was many years in 
building. It grew slowly, as the medieval cathedrals grew, 
the result of the skill and sacrifice of all the people who 
were drawn together to advance its progress and worship 
in it. The first great triumph was the opening of the 
chapel in 1905. This was made possible by the gift of 
Mr. William Newcomer, a member of the Disciples church 
in Hagerstown, Maryland. He had known and heard of 
Ainslie’s work and courage, and volunteered to contribute 
enough to complete the chapel and thus set the congrega¬ 
tion free to do what it seemed capable of doing under this 


42 



The Christian Temple 
Chapel opened January 15, 1905 
Main building opened September 29, 1907 








































































The Christian Temple 


43 

energetic young preacher. He made his gift without any 
strings attached — a procedure contrary to the sorry habit 
of many philanthropically minded men. 

But Ainslie’s vision was constantly enlarged. As soon 
as there was promise of sufficient funds to pay for one 
section of the building, he began another. The main 
building was completed in 1907. It was not until January 
20, 1920, however, that the Temple was entirely com¬ 
pleted, inside and out. Thus its congregation was made 
to feel that the Temple was really part of themselves. Each 
nook and cranny of it held precious memories of sacred 
partnership. It was a challenge rather than a burden, a 
daily invitation to self-denial, never a crushing weight of 
debt. 

When completed, the Christian Temple was a more or 
less composite structure, without a distinctive architectural 
style. Yet it was a serviceable building, with a neighborly 
and intimate auditorium for worship and fairly adequate 
space and equipment for religious education work. One 
of its finest and most meaningful features was the ceiling 
of the auditorium. In 1910, as we shall see in the next 
chapter, Ainslie espoused a new conception of Christian 
unity and of the duty of his own communion in relation 
to it. He determined to give his new vision physical ex¬ 
pression in the church auditorium. He drew up a list of 
great religious leaders of all times and countries and had 
their names inscribed on the ceiling of the auditorium. 
The roster is as follows: 

Eight pre-Christian leaders: Abraham, Moses, David, 
Ezra, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Amos, Hosea. 

Four Christian pioneers: Peter, James, John, Paul. 

Four Christian teachers: Augustine of Hippo, Wyclif 
of Oxford, Alford of Canterbury, Drummond of Glasgow. 


44 


Peter Ainslie 


Four Christian preachers: Chrysostom of Antioch, Rob¬ 
ertson of Brighton, Spurgeon of London, Moody of 
America. 

Four Christian artists: Michelangelo of Italy, Raphael 
of Italy, Bach of Germany, Watts of England. 

Four prophets of international peace: Origen of Alexan¬ 
dria, Grotius of Holland, Penn of England, Tolstoy of 
Russia. 

v Four prophets of Christian unity: Cyprian of Carthage, 
Calixtus of Germany, Baxter of England, Campbell of 
America. 

Four Christian mystics: Francis of Assisi, Bunyan of Bed¬ 
ford, Spener of Dresden, Wesley of Epworth. 

Four prophets of theological reform: Savonarola of Italy, 
Luther of Germany, Calvin of Geneva, Knox of Scotland. 

Four prophets of social reform: Wilberforce of England, 
Howard of England, Booth of England, Willard of Amer¬ 
ica. 

The unveiling of the ceiling was accompanied by a week 
of special services. The chief address at the opening serv¬ 
ice was made by Dr. Alfred Ernest Garvie, principal of 
New College, London. Then followed throughout the 
week services conducted by local pastors and their congre¬ 
gations according to their own peculiar liturgies or cere¬ 
monies. Among these were one held by a colored pastor 
and another, a Sabbath evening prayer service, conducted 
by a Jewish rabbi. This series of services was meant to 
express in concrete fashion the religious fellowship which 
the roll of prophets and reformers and distinguished reli¬ 
gious leaders inscribed on the ceiling conveyed. 

Every Sunday morning large congregations read these 
noble and historic names which at first may have meant 
little to them, but in time became household words in their 
thinking. It was a daring list to inscribe on the ceiling 


The Christian Temple 


45 

of a Disciples church, for many of these men were outside 
Disciple orthodoxy; some were even outside Protestantism! 
They did not belong to the true succession, nor had sacred 
hands been laid upon them, nor had they all been im¬ 
mersed. Ainslie dared to do this, however, as a means of 
widening the sense of fellowship within the minds both of 
his own congregation and of guests and passing visitors. 
Once in an anniversary service he said: 

As I stand in this pulpit Sunday after Sunday, I am fre¬ 
quently reminded of the comradeship of souls that occupy these 
pews — not only our devoted members, but usually persons 
from other Christian communions, ministers as well as laymen; 
and likewise I am frequently reminded of the lesson in fellow¬ 
ship of the forty-four names frescoed yonder in the border in 
Missionary Hall — all placed there irrespective of whether they 
were Hebrews, Eastern Orthodox, Roman Catholics or Prot¬ 
estants. In the remembrance of these experiences I feel that 
the Christian Temple is bearing a modest witness to the reality 
of the fellowship in religion. 

A friend, visiting me on one occasion, read carefully over 
these names and then remarked: “ Some of them are Roman 
Catholics, some do not practice the ordinances, some of them 
were put out of the church, and most of them practiced sprin¬ 
kling or affusion in baptism.” I replied: “ That did not occur 
to us when they were placed there. We had thought of them 
only as heralds of the Kingdom of God.” But my friend said, 
“ Would you take them into the church? ” And I replied, 
“ They are already in the church. Who am I that I should 
add to or take from the church of God, be they the living or 
the dead? ” “ But,” persisted my friend, “ if they were living 
would you take them into the membership of the Christian 
Temple? ” I answered: “ I feel that they are now more a part 
of my work than hundreds of persons whose names have been 
on my church roll during my ministry here of thirty-odd years, 
and, to each of them, I am personally indebted. I could not 
think, however, that the Christian Temple would refuse mem¬ 
bership to David Livingstone or General Booth because they 
had not had the same form of baptism as I had. I would as 
soon think that the Christian Temple would forbid their en- 


Peter Ainslie 


46 

trance into heaven.’' Then said my friend, “ From that I 
would conclude that if Dr. Robert E. Speer, or Dr. John R. 
Mott, or Miss Margaret Slattery should come down the aisle 
some Sunday, bearing letters from their respective churches, 
you would receive them.” My reply was: “ I certainly would, 
and, further, I believe that the members of the Christian Tem¬ 
ple — certainly a large majority of them, if not all of them — 
would doubt my Christian integrity if I hesitated to do so 
because they had another form of baptism than I had.” 

Ainslie carried to the Christian Temple the techniques 
he had tested and developed in the Calhoun Church. The 
first of these was pastoral and community visitation, to 
which he attached the greatest value. One of his diaries 
has this entry: 

In the month of October I made 325 calls, preached 21 ser¬ 
mons, including holding a meeting at one of our branch 
churches, delivered 11 addresses, dictated a lot of letters in the 
office, read several books, and I am still alive! I am enjoying 
getting back to the work. 

He gave himself passionately to such pastoral work as 
long as he lived. He refused, even in later life, when it 
overtaxed his powers and was against his physician’s ad¬ 
vice, to give it up. He contended that no service he might 
be able to contribute to the public generally could ever 
be comparable in value to that of journeying to the homes 
of men and women as evidence of interest in them. He 
put his philosophy of this service in a significant paragraph: 

I learned at the very outset of my ministry that the one fun¬ 
damental method of pastoral visitation is a definite and per¬ 
sonal concern for every member of the flock, becoming kins¬ 
man to all. As the physician goes on his rounds, believing 
he has the cure for most of the ills of the body, I go on my 
rounds with no less confidence, believing the gospel of Jesus 
Christ is the one cure for all the ills of the soul. If in the prepa¬ 
ration of a sermon or an article my mind did not work with 


The Christian Temple 


47 

ease, I would put on my hat and make a round of calls to come 
back with messages seething through my brain. 

His exacting work enlisted the sympathies of a layman 
of Baltimore (not one of his members) who became his 
good Samaritan. This man saw to it, as far as he was per¬ 
mitted, that Peter Ainslie should be spared the harder dis¬ 
comforts. On one occasion, in the generosity of his heart, 
he sent Ainslie the gift of a prancing horse and a new car¬ 
riage, to lighten the labor of pastoral calling. The spec¬ 
tacle of so fine an equipage appalled the humble preacher. 
He kept the horse in the stable so long and fed it so well 
that, when at length he hitched it up and started on a pas¬ 
toral round, the gaily stepping prancer cut such stylish 
capers that Ainslie decided to return it to the stall. He 
called up his benefactor to say he could not use so grand a 
horse to drive up to the homes of humble widows and 
lowly folk. He therefore begged to be excused from keep¬ 
ing the animal and asked that he be permitted to return 
the gift with thanks. 

By similar acts of gracious helpfulness other good friends 
sought to relieve the strain of pastoral cares, almost always 
with similar results. Ainslie insisted on being all things 
to all men, without any display of riches, to which he was 
ever a stranger. Innately he loved beauty and the com¬ 
forts of life. He liked to carry a cane on occasion, as a 
symbol of peace. But he would not permit himself to be¬ 
come the victim of an easy life, and soon put by all tokens 
of affluence and returned to the common drudgeries of the 
world as better suited to the station of the men and women 
among whom he moved. Nevertheless his friends’ solici¬ 
tude heartened him. 

He was further heartened by the coming of two kindred 
spirits from his beloved Virginia, Dr. T. M. and Dr. J. C. 
Lumpkin, and their families, whom he had known for 


48 


Peter Ainslie 


some time. They joined his congregation and were like 
Aaron and Hur, upholding his hands with unwavering 
devotion. For almost two decades these “ beloved physi¬ 
cians ” remained with Peter Ainslie as his invaluable coun¬ 
selors and supporters in all that he sought to do both at 
home and abroad. He often said that but for their vision 
and encouragement he would never have been able to 
maintain his wide public ministry. 

He had friends outside his congregation also, people who 
had heard of or observed the good work he was doing, and 
offered their help in carrying it forward. One of these, 
Mr. William Newcomer of Hagerstown, has already been 
mentioned. Another was Mr. W. H. Hoover, a well-to-do 
manufacturer of North Canton, Ohio. From time to time 
other men of wealth offered to help him in his various en¬ 
terprises. Usually, however, they wanted to attach a string 
to their gifts, and Ainslie was not the man to allow his ob¬ 
jectives to be entangled with causes he considered harmful. 
Of one such would-be donor he told this story: 

On one occasion a millionaire friend whom I had known for 
several years had heard favorable things of what I was doing 
and had become interested in its possibilities. He said he 
was now ready to endow it. He took up the matter at once 
and said that he was prepared to put into my hands a check 
for the first payment on this endowment but there were cer¬ 
tain conditions I would have to subscribe to. When these 
conditions were presented they were so conservative and de¬ 
nominational that I could not for a moment think of accept¬ 
ing them. My friends were disappointed in my attitude and 
tried earnestly to persuade me to accept the conditions. The 
discussion continued from ten in the morning until ten-thirty 
at night. It was a contest between conservative, denomina¬ 
tional theology and liberal and undenominational theology. 
“ No,” I said, “ I will not take so much as a cent that has a 
string to it. I would rather see the work close than accept it 
under this prescribed dictation of one generation to another. 


The Christian Temple 


49 

Of all gifts those having to do particularly with religious educa¬ 
tion ought to be free.” 

Ainslie records the sense of exaltation which he felt 
when this rich friend departed: 

I felt a sense of freedom, free from being bought, that was 
worth more to me than if I had safe in my pocket a check for 
a quarter of a million dollars. After twenty-five years of experi¬ 
mentation I was thoroughly convinced that “ not by might nor 
by power, but by the Spirit of the Lord of Hosts,” great diffi¬ 
culties can be overcome and what to many appear as absurd 
dreams become realities. 

Like many another well known servant of the public good, 
he stood upon the shoulders of others whose names are 
unknown, but without whom he likewise would have been 
“ unhonored and unsung.” 

Next in importance to pastoral visiting Peter Ainslie 
put his program of expansion. His nearest counselor 
among Disciple preachers was the strong and capable Dr. 
Frederick D. Power, pastor of the Vermont Avenue Chris¬ 
tian Church in Washington, D. C. It was the oft-expressed 
judgment of Dr. Power that no church which had more 
than three hundred members could develop the person¬ 
alities of its congregation, that a small church uses and 
unfolds the talents of its individual members as a large 
one cannot do. Ainslie adopted this point of view, which 
inevitably led to the policy of establishing what he called 
“ branch churches.” He insisted that his congregation 
“ swarm ” as often as possible. He opened new centers of 
Disciple worship in various parts of Baltimore as fast as 
he could persuade any group of his members to launch 
out for itself. Often he mortgaged the mother church in 
order to encourage another branch church to establish 


Peter Ainslie 


50 

itself in a new center. He likewise encouraged likely 
young men in his congregation to begin preaching in 
these new mission centers. He made many Timothies. 
These were not always adequately prepared, but they had 
a noble passion for the church and did an average measure 
of good work. By this process he subdivided his congre¬ 
gation again and again, though it involved constant finan¬ 
cial strain to meet the expenses incident to the formation 
of new organizations. 

How successful this method was we may still debate. 
It is true that some of these branches have closed their work 
or united with other churches. Big business would doubt¬ 
less vote against such a program as inefficient and wasting 
too much energy and expense in overhead. The modern 
tendency in business is rather toward the combination of 
smaller groups into strong and effective organizations. 
Possibly the testimony of the church also would now be 
against Ainslie’s policy. Whereas a former generation saw 
city mission boards planting their denominational churches 
systematically up and down city streets, these latter years 
have witnessed the merging of these small congregations. 

The Presbyterian Church of New York city furnishes a 
telling illustration. One hundred years ago it began a 
program of expansion which marched up Broadway and 
Fifth avenue with the growth of the city. It proposed to 
establish a Presbyterian church within walking distance 
of every Presbyterian in Manhattan. But for the past 
twenty-five years this policy has been reversed. Presby¬ 
terian churches have been merging and have been encour¬ 
aged to create fewer centers, each with larger and better 
equipment. It is the judgment of the New York Pres¬ 
byterian board, after a century of experiment, that the 
part of wisdom is to centralize the financial and spiritual 
powers of the church. 


The Christian Temple 51 

Ainslie’s method had in its favor the fact that it released 
and drew out the talents of individual members, thereby 
sharply opposing the tendency toward the sense of ease 
with which an individual can lose himself in a large con¬ 
gregation. Something is still to be said for it. But there 
is a loss of energy, as of stimulation, when capability is 
spent in small tasks or small groups of people. Possibly 
one of the strongest influences now making for Christian 
unity is the sense of loss Christians feel in small separate 
congregations with their inevitable impoverishment in 
worship because insufficient means prevent them from se¬ 
curing the best art and talent. At any rate, the idea of 
the branch church is passing, whether for good or ill. 

But many as were his helpers in the growth and expan¬ 
sion of the congregation, the Christian Temple was still 
the peculiar possession of Peter Ainslie’s mind and heart. 
He organized it and was its only pastor until he died thirty- 
five years later. No one ever thought of disputing with 
him the course of its destiny or the program of its activities. 
He consulted with many about methods of procedure, but 
his confreres always waited to catch the drift of his mind 
and concurred rather than advised. The measure of his 
devotion to the church was such that they hesitated to at¬ 
tempt to change his mind once it had been set on a given 
course. Thus the Christian Temple became the lengthened 
shadow of its minister. The singular spiritual unity of 
the Temple fellowship was no doubt due to the closely 
knit bond between Ainslie and the members of his church. 
Without this sense of a family tie binding pastor and mem¬ 
bers together, it would scarcely have been possible for him 
to keep his church together during so many years and 
through such long absences as his travels necessitated. His 
people were most patient while he was away, feeling that 


52 Peter Ainslie 

they themselves had a part in whatever good cause he was 
promoting. 

Always when he returned from a long journey Ainslie 
would give his congregation a detailed account of his expe¬ 
riences, like a father’s intimate recital to his family of the 
incidents he had shared while far from home. This prac¬ 
tice, together with the fact that they knew he had many 
invitations to leave them for pulpits which offered much 
greater financial compensation, made his people appre¬ 
ciate him the more and created within them a sense of 
self-dependence and a readiness for self-denial. The lay¬ 
men would carry on the services of the Temple for many 
weeks each year, even doing the preaching and conducting 
funerals. Ainslie delighted to recall the young men who 
had gone into the ministry from his church. The need 
occasioned by his absences and by the establishment of 
the numerous branch churches first called them out and 
thus led them to discover themselves. 

In spite of such lay activity, however, the Temple re¬ 
mained essentially a one-man church. What Ainslie 
wanted done was done. He had so stamped his people with 
his spirit and quality of mind that the relation between 
him and them was like that between a devoted couple who, 
through many years of marriage, had shared so many joys 
and sorrows that any question might as well be put to one 
as to the other — the answer would be the same. Ainslie 
was the center of the Temple organization. If one can 
say it without being misunderstood, his pastorate was a 
benevolent dictatorship. 

If he wanted something done, he spoke about it. If that 
did no good he began doing something about it, and in 
such fashion as to make the whole church obligated to 
move with him. Among the last examples of his “ direct 
method” was his purchase of a new site for the Christian 
Temple. The character of the Temple community had 


The Christian Temple 


53 

been changing, the area was being depopulated and prop¬ 
erty values were declining. Peter Ainslie felt that there 
was little future for his ministry in the immediate neigh¬ 
borhood. He proposed that the congregation purchase a 
new site in a rapidly growing suburban section. As always 
in such cases, there were varied opinions. Many opposed 
the change both on account of the added difficulty of going 
so far away from the more central location and because 
of fixed habits and the power of sentiment and tradition 
which bound them to the old location. 

Ainslie did not argue. He simply bought a new site. 
He bought it by mortgaging his own home. His members 
could not argue with such conviction. Any man who be¬ 
lieved so strongly in his convictions as to risk for them 
the one sure possession he had was beyond persuasion. 
There was nothing for the church to do but to assume the 
obligation. It was only Ainslie’s sudden death that pre¬ 
vented him from starting to build in the new location. 

In the same mood of kindly authority he once asked a 
fellow minister, “ Do you have elders in your congrega¬ 
tion? ” “ Certainly,” the other responded; “ it would not 
be a Disciple church without elders. Do you not have 
them? ” “ No,” Ainslie replied, “ they bother me.” 

While this was a whimsical statement, yet it was literally 
true. At that time and for some years after he himself 
was the only elder in his congregation. Because he had 
brought the church into being and had given it his com¬ 
plete devotion, few had the audacity to seek to dissuade 
him from any dream upon which he had set his mind and 
heart. 

The Christian Temple therefore grew to be a patri¬ 
archal society. Its pastor became the spiritual godfather 
of all the babies born in the congregation and the elder 
brother of all the children. He belonged to every family 
in his parish as the “other member” of each separate 


54 


Peter Ainslie 


household. For almost thirty years he remained unmar¬ 
ried, a Protestant priest. The bachelor years of Ainslie 
made him the son and brother and friend of all the fami¬ 
lies of a numerous parish. The intimate affairs that be¬ 
long only to the inner family circle were shared with him 
and had his absorbed interest. With an all but infinite 
patience he listened to the endless confidences poured into 
his receptive ear. The fortunes and misfortunes, the least 
joys and sorrows of all his people became his own. In no 
irreverent sense his people could have said of him, “ Surely 
he hath borne our griefs and carried our sorrows.” 

He had the adoring affection of the children of his par¬ 
ish. Generation after generation of little folk followed 
one another in his long pastorate. All in turn sat on his 
knee while his kindly arm encircled them. There was no 
aloofness which they felt or feared. His mystic mind did 
not cause them to stand in awe of him or create in them 
any sense of detachment on his part. So intimately did 
he enter into their affairs that in their thought he had no 
business so important as listening to their prattle. What¬ 
ever duty pressed him at the moment, their coming swept 
all other obligations aside. It was not his family experi¬ 
ence that gave him that magnetism for children, but his 
love for them that bound them to him by inseparable 
bonds. There are many hundreds of these children now 
grown up who feel they possessed him personally. They 
scarcely comprehended then the absorbing concerns that 
were upon his mind because he lived with them in their 
world, at their angle of interest. He was capable of be¬ 
coming all things even to little children and so gained for 
himself their deathless love. One of his reflections gives 
the clue: “ Children’s faces are pictured on my heart as 
easily as on a camera.” 

As the children of a masterful father are often less capa- 


The Christian Temple 


55 

ble of aggressive leadership and of enduring the white light 
of publicity, so the congregation whose minister has an ex¬ 
ceptionally strong personality is likely to be less assertive 
in its ideas and opinions. The very strength of the man 
tends to overshadow the views and capacities of his laymen. 
The depth of his passion for any cause Ainslie espoused 
made it hard to oppose him without seeming to wound 
him. Since members of his church knew best the delicate 
sensitiveness of his nature and the strong compulsions that 
moved him, they were less willing to contend against his 
proposals. But effective churchmen, like great oaks, grow 
by the measure of opposition they exert toward differing 
opinions and judgments. If Ainslie had been less gentle 
and lovely in soul his people would have felt less keenly 
the pain of opposing him. Their choice was either to 
“ withstand him face to face ” or to yield their judgment 
to his and so deprive the church of a more general counsel 
and assertive leadership. Possibly every minister must 
gauge his effectiveness by the degree of his ability to re¬ 
produce in multiple a capable leadership which can main¬ 
tain and carry on what he has begun. T. DeWitt Talmage 
had a congregation of thousands when his Brooklyn Taber¬ 
nacle burned. In a year this vast throng was gone like 
the leaves scurrying before the November wind. Many 
humble ministers have wrought unhonored and unsung, 
but when they relinquished their task, their congregations 
had the inner resources and powers to continue an effec¬ 
tive witness. 

Each man’s ministry must supply the proof of whether 
a pastor best develops his congregation by exercising a 
larger measure of the necessary decision himself or by 
cultivating their powers in directed channels and areas of 
service. Possibly the former course saves a congregation 
from much wasted effort and futile experimentation, while 


Peter Ainslie 


56 

the latter develops a capacity of leadership that can meet 
new situations when the strong hand shall be relaxed. It 
is quite probable that eventually a pastor will derive more 
satisfaction from his church’s ability to carry on when he 
has quit the field than from having made it an effective 
instrument for his own designs while his hand was at the 
helm. However, every man must choose the armor that 
best fits him. He can use only the material that is in him. 
Jesus’ way was to grow leaders. One man may work more 
effectively toward this end by employing the method of 
the potter molding his clay, while another succeeds by imi¬ 
tating the gardener who cultivates his seed and helps each 
plant to grow “ after its kind.” 

The celebrated Dr. Russell Conwell of Philadelphia, 
pastor of the Baptist Temple, was accustomed to say that 
he was able to carry on his extensive work there because 
he was so frequently absent from his church. If he had 
always been present, he declared, the congregation would 
have devoured him with its petty interests and personal 
problems that could easily be taken care of by his assist¬ 
ants. Dr. Conwell contended that he was able to bring 
back from the round of lectures and travels which took 
him away from his church more than two hundred nights 
each year, an enrichment of understanding and of experi¬ 
ence that enlarged the vision of his people also. But how 
few Dr. Conwells there are and how many pastoral wrecks 
would follow in the wake of any general attempt to imitate 
this method! The value of Ainslie’s ability to bring back 
to his parish his widening experience depended on their 
appreciation of his contribution to Christendom. No 
doubt the patience of the Christian Temple was the direct 
result of the larger vision its members gained from their 
minister’s reports of all he had seen and shared. More¬ 
over, his widespread activity gave his people a sense of 


The Christian Temple 


57 

importance and pride in the fact that their church could 
present so capable a leader to the church universal. They 
had somewhat the same satisfaction that a mother feels 
when her son is recognized in distant places. Very natu¬ 
rally the compulsions which led him far afield grew pre¬ 
cious to them also, the more so since Peter Ainslie’s causes 
were always enlarging and ennobling to contemplate. If 
he had absented himself from his pulpit for such long pe¬ 
riods for purely personal reasons his church would most 
surely have disintegrated. But the very selflessness of his 
ambassadorship challenged his people to measure their de¬ 
votion against his. Possibly this was the secret also of the 
Baptist Temple in Philadelphia, for Dr. Conwell brought 
back the proceeds of his extended lectureship to build a 
college for poor boys and girls, and this fact bowed his 
congregation under a sense of obligation to equal his de¬ 
votion. Despite these long absences, Ainslie did a great 
deal of pastoral calling whenever he was at home. 

He seemed indeed to be tireless. His work was his play, 
and the “ extra-curricular ” demands he made on himself 
but added zest to the game. He seemed never to weary of 
new experiments. The word “ experiment ” had a most 
prominent place in his thought. He was always trying 
something new. But an experiment was not a mere 
flare-up of his mind; it was always an attempt to meet some 
exigency which he saw within his parish or community. 

One of these experiments was the Working Girls’ Home, 
of which we shall speak later. Another was what he called 
“ Seminary House,” a miniature school of religion which 
he opened in connection with the Temple shortly after 
the building was begun. He was the president and, to¬ 
gether with fellow pastors of other communions whom he 
invited to share this task, carried on a widely diversified 
program of religious education. There were courses in 


Peter Ainslie 


58 

the Old Testament and New Testament, in church history, 
in missions and kindred subjects of interest to laymen, 
given at regular hours and seasons. Credits were given 
and students “ graduated.” Commencements were digni¬ 
fied by cap and gown and all the formalities that belong 
to accredited academic institutions. Students entered 
these courses from other Protestant and even from Catho¬ 
lic fellowships. A sense of universality was engendered. 
Neighboring pastors found new usefulness in those who 
returned from sharing this experience. 

Ainslie’s ministry was not without its remarkable evi¬ 
dence of his skill as a promoter. In the earlier years he 
was not content with the audiences which filled his build¬ 
ing to capacity, nor would he permit his modesty to re¬ 
strain him from seeking larger audiences, and in a way 
hitherto unfamiliar to churches. He embarked upon the 
difficult and perilous experiment of holding theater meet¬ 
ings once each month. His church officials sought to dis¬ 
suade him from this venture because they did not think 
that the theater could be filled. To the astonishment of 
those who doubted, and even to his own surprise, he drew 
such large audiences that he had, on occasion, to be taken 
to the platform by policemen who forced a way through 
the crowd for him. By such methods the city was made 
conscious of his presence and of the presence of his church. 

Nor did he limit his efforts to the winning of a public 
hearing in theater meetings. He capitalized on whatever 
public issues arose. He reached out into the entire city 
for comrades of the spirit whom he called into conference, 
whether on some burning issue of the race problem or for 
the purpose of giving civic recognition to some cause or 
person. By his widely embracing interest in the commu¬ 
nal life of the city he was brought into intimate contact on 
the one hand with the Quakers and on the other hand with 


The Christian Temple 


59 

Cardinal Gibbons, prince of the Roman Catholic Church 
in that area. Some of the most prized letters he ever re¬ 
ceived were from this distinguished prelate. Against the 
judgment of many of his fellow Protestant ministers he ac¬ 
cepted an invitation to share in a public welcome to Car¬ 
dinal Gibbons upon the cardinal’s return after a long 
absence. By such a spirit of fair play and widespread par¬ 
ticipation he won, in the course of his long pastorate, a 
place for himself and for his church, which made his name 
familiar to Jew and gentile, Protestant and Catholic, rich 
and poor, throughout the city. 


6. The Chrysalis Broken 

The imprisoned Chrysalis is now a winged Psyche. 

THOMAS CARLYLE, in SARTOR RESARTUS 


THE year 1910 saw a distinct widening in the 
conceptions of Peter Ainslie. He once said in private con¬ 
versation that had he passed away before that year he 
would not have been known outside his beloved city of 
Baltimore. That was not wholly true, but it did approxi¬ 
mate the facts. Until that time his energies had been 
largely consumed by his parish and his denomination. 
Among the Disciples he was widely known and honored 
because of his ardent devotion to the Plea. What Ainslie 
had written and preached until then was concerned chiefly 
with that theme. He had followed the traditional paths 
of his religious group. During the first twenty years of 
his ministry in Baltimore he had, for the most part, 
preached a gospel of exclusiveness. While he was never 
harsh or bitter in his message or attitude, none of his con¬ 
temporaries was more thoroughly persuaded of the finality 
of the Disciples’ position or more comfortable in its proc¬ 
lamation. Whatever growing compulsions toward larger 
inclusiveness were striving within his mind, his recorded 
sermons and written addresses give scarcely a hint of them. 
Ordinarily the human mind follows the law of evolution 
in its unfolding; it does not break abruptly with its past; 
but twice in his ministry, Ainslie broke with what seemed 
startling suddenness with his former course, both times 
in the direction of greater inclusiveness. 

The first of these sudden shifts came in the year 1910, 

60 



Peter Ainslie 
in 1910 











The Chrysalis Broken 


61 


at the end of his term as president of his denomination’s 
annual convention, an office to which he had been elected 
at Pittsburgh in 1909. His office necessitated a wide visi¬ 
tation of the churches of his communion, and he was called 
upon to speak at many of the Disciples’ state conventions. 
These contacts gave him a new understanding of the mind 
of his people. He was startled to find how slowly they 
had traveled toward the dream of the Campbells. At the 
dedication of the first church building erected by the Re¬ 
formers Alexander Campbell had said that it was a church 
“ whose door shall be as wide as the Kingdom of God.” 
But Peter Ainslie found that the door had been closed 
to multitudes who belonged to the Kingdom. Here, as 
throughout his life, experience was his university, the 
school where he learned quickly and never forgot. 

But if the duties of his presidency awakened his mind 
to the failure of the Disciples to follow the vision which 
had first lured them, it likewise quickened his thought 
toward the “ other sheep, not of this fold.” Instead of 
the cautious carefulness that tracks down many men sud¬ 
denly thrust into places of leadership, causing them to 
parrot the familiar shibboleths of their groups, Peter Ains¬ 
lie was shocked into daring courage. His spirit was 
stirred within him as he set about preparing his presi¬ 
dential address for the annual convention of the Disciples 
at Topeka, Kansas, in 1910. Traditionally, the presiden¬ 
tial address set the pattern for the communion for the 
ensuing year. It offered Ainslie his first great opportunity 
to strike a blow at the evil he had recognized, and to lay 
bare his heart. He did not spare the feelings of his own 
brethren where their limitations detracted from their use¬ 
fulness to the issues of the Kingdom. He rebuked those 
among the Disciples who manifested uncharitableness to¬ 
ward other religious bodies, who preached Christian union 


62 


Peter Ainslie 


as if it were an original gospel of their own and presented 
it merely as an appeal for conversion to the Plea of the 
Disciples. He condemned denominational absorption of 
all Christians as being incompatible with the mind of 
Jesus. That address is given here in full, since it marked a 
distinct turning point in Ainslie’s life. 

OUR FELLOWSHIP AND THE TASK 

We who wear the name Christian only have climbed a 
hundred rugged steps and today, standing on God’s balcony, 
we look down the past, and yonder is Jesus moving in that 
mightiest drama of all time. The cross is still stained with his 
blood, the tomb of Arimathaea lies broken, and the ascension 
from the Mount of Olives is as fresh as though it were the action 
of yesterday. Yonder are the apostles telling the story of Jesus 
and the resurrection from the dead. Yonder is Paul preaching 
in Ephesus, Philippi, Athens and Corinth. 

Yonder is Luther nailing the ninety-five theses to the door 
of the castle church in Wittenberg, and Calvin, a refugee from 
persecution, writing his Institutes. Yonder are the Wesleys 
calling all believers in Jesus to the life of personal holiness, 
and the Campbells pleading for a united church by the return 
to the New Testament in name, in ordinances and in life. 
What a host of saints! Some were called “ Nazarenes,” others 
“ Christians,” still others “ Roman Catholics,” others “ Reform¬ 
ers ” and some “ Disciples,” but whatever be their names all 
these are our brethren. If they were authors, we have their 
books in our libraries and we quote their sayings; if they were 
artists, we have their paintings in our homes and admire their 
achievements; and whatever may have been their contribution 
to Christ, we hold them as our brothers. Some of them thought 
differently from what we think but they all loved our Lord 
and sought to reproduce him in their lives. Say what you will, 
they live because Christ lived in them. 

But standing on God’s balcony, we look about us today and 
yonder are millions in all parts of the world witnessing for 
Jesus. Some are preaching to the multitudes with a passion 
like that of those brothers of the holy past. Others have left 
homes and friends and are preaching Jesus and the resurrec- 


The Chrysalis Broken 


63 

tion from the dead to the heathen nations. Here and yonder 
are hospitals for the sick, asylums for the orphan, homes for 
the aged and schools for the ignorant. Some are ministering 
to the poor and friendless, others are crutches to the lame and 
stumbling, and thousands are serving in obscure places for the 
sake of Him whose we are. What a host of saints! 

They are called “ Presbyterians,” “ Baptists,” “ Episcopa¬ 
lians,” “ Congregationalists,” “ Lutherans,” “ Methodists ” and 
“ Disciples,” but whatever be their names, all these likewise are 
our brethren, for they show that they have been with Jesus. 
Some may doubt this fellowship, but I will not, for I feel in 
my heart the kinship, as I feel within me the love of God. 

Still standing on God’s balcony we look into the sacred fu¬ 
ture and yonder are vast multitudes of believers out of every 
tribe and tongue and people and nation. They are servants 
of Jesus, because our brethren of the past and our brethren 
of the present served. The currents of fellowship, too fre¬ 
quently unrecognized by us, have so passed from one heart to 
the other, until all the saints of the past and all the saints of 
the present and all the saints of the future belong in this blessed 
circle of the redeemed. Love, fraternity, friendship and 
brotherhood are passing from dream into fact. Sectarianism 
is going to its entombment and a united brotherhood is rising 
with its undivided message for a lost world, for yonder down 
the ages is one flock as there is one Shepherd. 

There nobility of soul is holding an unbroken fellowship 
with Christ and with all who worship before him, for out of 
the travail of the church, all denominational names and their 
dependencies are lost, and out of the Christ-spirit shall rise for 
perpetual adornment the name which is above every name and 
before which every knee shall bow. For yonder on the rim of 
the horizon, unnumbered hosts of angels assemble and the 
unnumbered hosts of the redeemed of humanity meet and 
mingle, like where the blue of the sky and the blue of the sea 
touch and the line of the sea is lost in the line of the sky. What 
a host of saints! They both wear his name and reproduce his 
life. Yonder among them and yet above them all is Jesus in 
his majesty and the glory of the universe hangs upon the wheels 
of his advent chariot. 

What a vision from God’s balcony! Whether we look into 
the past, or around us, or into the future, we see our brethren. 


Peter Ainslie 


64 

Then let us remember as wearers of the name Christian only, 
we hold in this period of God’s providence the cure for the di¬ 
vided church. Our message, therefore, to the present and to 
the future is to remove the barriers to brotherhood by a larger 
loyalty to the personality of Christ. The rightful contribution 
of the Disciples to modern religion is the widening of faith’s 
view, for the best asset in this world is faith in Jesus Christ 
and love for all who love our Lord. 

We hold the deposits of the past; we are the joint creators 
of the present; we are debtors to the future. It is the broadest 
platform in the world. Holding with deep conviction to per¬ 
sonal faith in Jesus Christ and obedience to his command¬ 
ments, we must hold with equally deep conviction to fellow¬ 
ship with all believers, else we drop to the level of a sect. 

About a hundred years ago, some Presbyterians and Baptists 
proposed to return to Christ by way of the New Testament in 
name, in ordinances and in life. These abandoned their hu¬ 
man creeds and denominational names and became Christians 
only and their proposition to all Christendom is to do likewise, 
for human creeds and denominational names are the greatest 
barriers to a united fellowship. 

These Christians, who were first called “ Disciples of Christ ” 
about a hundred years ago, propose going back to Christ and 
Christ alone, for Christianity started neither from theological 
ideas nor ethical principles, but from the personality of Jesus 
Christ. To be in possession of its original power, it must go 
back to fidelity to that personality. There has been no message 
like this since the church divided and its practicability is sim¬ 
ple and axiomatic. It at once overshadows all other proposi¬ 
tions for the union of Christendom, for only in unstinted loy¬ 
alty to Christ do we find the key to brotherhood. To turn 
aside, to surrender the ordinances on the one hand or to narrow 
the fellowship on the other, is to give a sectarian complexion to 
an unsectarian message. We have no choice other than fidelity 
to Christ, into whom we have been baptized and with whom 
we were raised up to walk in newness of life until there shall 
have been such friendship between him and us that all men 
shall know that we have been with Jesus. We have among us 
some of the noblest spirits of this world, brave and true men 
in the pulpit and faithful and consecrated members in the pew. 

I beg that you will pardon me if I speak too frankly, but 


The Chrysalis Broken 65 

these are serious times and soft words will not suffice. If I mis¬ 
take not, the Disciples of Christ are facing the most critical 
period in their history. It is so with all movements. After 
passing a new decade or a century at most, they drift from 
their original principles either into wreckage or crystallization. 
It was so with every order started in the Roman Catholic 
Church and it has likewise been so with every movement in 
Protestantism. Loyola upstayed a falling church by his genu¬ 
ine piety, but the Jesuits became the curse and shame of Rome. 
The Lutheran movement crystallized as has also Methodism 
and every other Protestant body of any years. The Dis¬ 
ciples are passing the way of all others, and I fear that the 
prow of our ship is too decidedly set toward sectarian harbors, 
and unless we turn our course in conformity to Thomas Camp¬ 
bell’s clarion call, the fact that we have so much truth, we are 
destined to become one of the most sectarian bodies, as love 
unused becomes unlove. These conditions must not be 
smoothed over with self-laudatory sentences and self-congratu¬ 
latory reports, but it behooves us as students of history and 
servants of Christ to face the bare facts and humbly set our¬ 
selves to the solution. 

In the last twelve months I have traveled more than sixteen 
thousand miles in the interest of American missions. I have 
spoken to thousands and have held conferences with hun¬ 
dreds, from which I have learned that, in the opinion of many 
of our brethren, not more than a tenth or at most twenty-five 
per cent of our membership know anything at all about what 
the mission of the Disciples is. They may know that the New 
Testament baptism is by immersion; but if that is all, they 
might as well be Baptists. They may know that the churches 
of Christ have elders and deacons; but if that is all, they might 
as well be Presbyterians. They may know that the New Testa¬ 
ment government is congregational; but if that is all, they 
might as well be Congregationalists. 

I do not speak as a partisan, but it must be recognized as 
axiomatically true that where there is division and discord, 
it is wisest to refer the whole matter to a supreme authority. 
It is so today. The church of Christ is divided into many 
unaffiliated bodies and the greatest call of Christendom is back 
to Christ by the way of the New Testament, in name, in ordi¬ 
nances and in life. 


66 


Peter Ainslie 


However thoroughly one may be educated in literature and 
science, if he does not understand the mission of the Disciples, 
he is counted among the ignorant in our membership; intel¬ 
ligence among us is that vision and heart that sees and believes 
that the absolute leadership of Jesus Christ is necessary for a 
united church and a redeemed world. If it is true that only 
ten to fifteen per cent of our membership — and most of the 
opinions center around these figures - if it be true that these 
figures represent the intelligence among us, it is impossible to 
fulfill our mission, unless some definite plan be established 
whereby the ninety or eight-five per cent of our membership 
shall be educated into the responsibility of the sacred commis¬ 
sion, which we hold as Christians only. 

I do not know but that the problem of ourselves at this 
period is quite as urgent to us at least as the problem of the 
divided church. Do not misunderstand me, for I am not ad¬ 
vocating the study of a catechism. Far be it from me. But I 
insist on a systematic and devotional study of the Scriptures 
until every Disciple shall recognize the personal leadership 
of Jesus in his life and shall intelligently practice the prin¬ 
ciples of Jesus both as to himself and as to those about him, 
that every home shall have a family altar and that religion 
shall be lifted out of the pale dogma and be made the life of 
mankind. 

It is an auspicious time and it is a pertinent question to ask 
ourselves, as Disciples of Christ, what are we doing for the 
solution of this problem? And the answer is that our con¬ 
tribution to the union of Christendom is speaking faithfully 
regarding it from our pulpits where it is heard only by our 
own people and the inactive members of other churches and 
persons of the world, and by writing of it in our papers, which 
are subscribed for largely by our own people. I beg that you 
will pardon me, but you know that this is not enough, and 
unless we do more, especially in this period, the Christian 
world will have a right to doubt our sincerity. 

They know little of us and our mission, and it is largely if 
not entirely our fault. I doubt if there is another religious 
body of the same numerical strength in the history of the 
world that is so little known as the Disciples of Christ, and, 
considering the commission that we hold, there is no other 
religious body that ought to be better known. I question 


The Chrysalis Broken 


6 7 

whether this contentment to be so little known and this indif¬ 
ference to making world-wide this proposition for the union 
of Christendom is not grave disloyalty to Christ. If this propo¬ 
sition is not of God, it ought to be abandoned; if it is of God, 
it ought to call for an unparalleled enthusiasm on the part 
of every Disciple of Christ, until all Christendom shall hear in 
kindest words that back to Christ in name, in ordinances and 
in life is the only cure for the scandalous division in the house 
of God. 

The Episcopalians have incorporated the Christian Unity 
Foundation with the purpose of promoting Christian union 
at home and throughout the world until the various Christian 
bodies are knit together in one organic life. Such is the aim 
expressed in their charter and we rejoice in their splendid 
vision; but we who are Christians only should likewise estab¬ 
lish a foundation in this interest and it should be as impor¬ 
tant among us as the Foreign Christian Missionary Society 
or the Christian Woman’s Board of Missions or the American 
Christian Missionary Society or any of our colleges. 

This foundation should put out a magazine, not as a propa¬ 
ganda, but as a clearinghouse of thought on Christian union. 
As we exercise the right to think, we must grant that right 
to others, for until we have stood on their level we cannot lift 
them out of denominational names and human creeds. Open 
wide its pages to all who have convictions on Christian union 
and let them speak without criticism through its pages to 
their brothers who are thinking with them on the necessity 
of a united church, and make it the exchange of every paper 
in the English-speaking world. Send it both to Disciples and 
certain other disciples, if you please, for there are ripe souls 
in all communions who would gladly receive this as a benedic¬ 
tion of peace, and the instincts of a united church would bum 
more deeply within us. Besides all this, who knows whether 
the last word on Christian union has been spoken? So far, our 
proposition is in advance of all others, but maybe another 
voice of the Campbells marked the beginning of its decay. 

Such a foundation should receive an endowment as large 
as that of a college and all the churches should have a part 
in the contribution, for the union of Christendom is of first 
importance and the necessity is laid more upon us for such 
a service than any other religious body, for to this end did we 


68 


Peter Ainslie 


become Christians only. The Protestant world needs it, and 
it is riper now than at any other time in its history and we 
ourselves need it for our own salvation. Others may see an¬ 
other way out of our danger, but to me the broader field of 
fellowship is preeminent over all other policies, for out of a 
friendly conference, we would find a common basis and the 
leadership of Jesus would make us forget all our unbrother- 
liness and leave behind all sectarian barriers. 

We are accustomed to speak of preaching the whole gospel 
when it includes faith, repentance and baptism — and I would 
not lessen the place of these; but the fine exhortation is, having 
conformed to the doctrine of the first principles of Christ, let 
us press on unto perfection. The whole gospel is not alone 
faith, repentance and baptism, but love, joy, peace, long-suf¬ 
fering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, meekness and self- 
control. We have established among ourselves a conscience 
on faith, repentance and baptism, and I am not ashamed of 
it; but the time is at hand when we must likewise establish 
throughout our whole brotherhood, equally as deep a con¬ 
science on the fruit of the Spirit. The spiritual necessities 
of our time demand God in all our being and at the same time 
these spiritual necessities proclaim God. 

As wearers of the name Christian only, we are bound by all 
the sufferings of Christ and the hope of the resurrection to a 
vital brotherhood among ourselves, yet the last decade has 
witnessed the culmination of a division among us on mission¬ 
ary society and anti-missionary society methods, which is as 
absurd a cause for division as the wearing of buttons instead 
of hooks and eyes among the Anabaptists in the seventeenth 
century caused to rise a “ Button party ” and a “ Hook and Eye 
party ” that lasted for generations. The fever on these little 
matters is too contagious. If the missionary methods do not 
just suit us — and I say this for those who are regular con¬ 
tributors and then stop — because the officials of the society 
do something we do not like, let us remember that the mis¬ 
sionaries on the field are the representatives of Christ to the 
unsaved. They must not suffer because of our folly, but we 
are honored in being allowed to contribute to their support. 
Such persons may take their spite out on anything they please, 
if they please to do that way, but never on the men and women 


The Chrysalis Broken 69 

who have left home and friends to go to the unsaved to tell 
of Jesus and the resurrection from the dead. 

While the union sentiment is so prevalent among all Chris¬ 
tians, we must see that it is the preeminent sentiment among 
ourselves. It is not an uncommon thing to hear it said among 
us, “ I am a Standard man,” or “ I am an Evangelist man,” or 
“ I am a Century man,” as it was said years ago, “ I am of 
Paul,” and “ I am of Apollo,” and “ I of Cephas.” We ought 
to be ashamed to line up in any such fashion, for it betrays 
as much carnality now as it did in the days of the Corin¬ 
thians. For my part, I would as soon wear a denominational 
name among my religious neighbors as to wear a class name 
among my own people. I read these three papers every week 
and I know of no reason why I should not continue to do 
so, but I belong to none of them, other than I am a part of 
all my brethren. Instead of so much fault-finding, let us 
stand up in the gateway of this new century and pray for the 
editors of all our papers, for more things are wrought by 
prayer than the soul has dreamed. 

I hear a thousand voices around the world crying against 
war — some are the voices of Christians, some pagans, some 
infidels; but I have heard no loud voice among the Disciples, 
and yet logically we ought to have been among the loudest 
voices for international disarmament and universal peace. I 
will not take up arms against my brother, for I carry in my 
bosom, as you do in yours, a greater power for the solution 
of national and international problems than the combined 
armies of the world. As wearers of the name Christian only, 
hostility to war should be as deeply rooted in our conscience 
as it is in the conscience of our Quaker brethren and especially 
at this time since the fever of war is burning in the bones of 
certain European and Asiatic nations. 

These times demand men of education. Both brain and 
heart are made to be developed. The schools can do only a 
part of educating. They give the student the tools by which 
he lays the foundation for a structure, upon which he climbs 
to its wide-visioned heights. Too many men drop their tools 
on the college steps and go stumbling into life and finding 
fault because their education is not appreciated. The fact is 
the man is not educated. He has the tools, but they have 


Peter Ainslie 


70 

rusted from misuse. It is not education to know the roots 
of words and the solution of geometrical problems, but as 
Nicholas Murray Butler says: “ Education is a gradual adjust¬ 
ment to the spiritual possession of the race,” and “ its pur¬ 
pose is,” said Herbert Spencer, “ to prepare us for complete 
living.” Away with that barbarous interrogation, “ What 
has the young man learned? ” But I ask the question of civili¬ 
zation: “ What has the young man become? ” Our young men 
for the ministry should have the best educational equipment 
that they may become the best servants possible to the Lord 
Almighty. After their college days, they should seek to make 
this life the schoolroom for their real education, as well as 
real service. Every college should teach the ministerial stu¬ 
dents not only how to make a sermon according to the rules 
of homiletics, but how to write a readable article for the secu¬ 
lar press, but there is as much art in the one as in the other, 
and the neglect of the former, especially by the Disciples, is 
another instance of our failure to use God-given opportunities, 
for both the pulpit and the press are mighty avenues for God, 
and his ministry should seek to be skilled in the use of both. 

A radical defect in the training of our modem ministry in 
all churches is not teaching young men the secrets of holiness 
and the power of prayer. The disciples did not ask Jesus 
to teach them how to preach, but how to pray. I do not 
mean literary instruction, I do not mean the lessons of the 
classroom, but I mean a man in touch with God ought to lead 
young men out of his own experience into the experience of 
the consciousness of God, the fellowship of Christ and the 
blessedness of prayer, until the young man is able to say out 
of his own experience and conviction, “ I know whom I be¬ 
lieve.” This is the ministry the world is waiting for and until 
that ministry comes the nations will not be brought to the 
foot of the cross. 

All this is preliminary to the first and chief purpose of our 
existence as Disciples of Jesus Christ. Fellowship with the 
good, union with all believers, faithfully practicing Christian 
ethics — these are but the beginnings, for the task over all is 
working together with God to make ourselves like Jesus. Our 
confession meant this, and if such was not our conception of 
baptism, our baptism has become unbaptism. 


The Chrysalis Broken 71 

With this utterance Peter Ainslie crossed his Rubicon. 
The die was cast. He could no more live within the pre¬ 
scribed circle of denominational molds. He had no idea 
of deserting his communion, nor did he dream of asking 
other Christians to desert their separate folds until a com¬ 
mon passion for and conception of the grounds of Chris¬ 
tian unity could be agreed upon. But he saw where his 
duty lay, and determined to follow it. 

Not only the experience of his presidential office, but 
the expanding ministry of his own Christian Temple led 
Peter Ainslie to see that no congregation “ liveth unto it¬ 
self that in the end the spiritual health of any fellowship 
can prosper only as the health of all communions prospers; 
that the gain of any single branch of the church can be 
assured only as the fortunes of all other fellowships are 
likewise advanced. During these years multiplied mis¬ 
sionary societies had been organized and endowed in the 
several communions to propagate the “ true faith ” at 
home and abroad. Their representatives visited each cen¬ 
ter of population without regard for the total issue of 
religion. Such zeal but served to create local conflicts. 
Home missions often came to be but the fingertip of the 
arm that reached out from invested funds and worked to 
perpetuate an unholy and unneighborly condition in every 
part of America. 

Consequently, Peter Ainslie’s thought went out to the 
whole church. In his mind the sin that most blighted 
the church’s welfare was disunity. The policy of isolation 
and ostracism which churches practiced toward one an¬ 
other seemed to him a scandal. He loved to quote Prin¬ 
cipal Fairbairn’s statement: “ That man is not the worst 
infidel who says that there is no God, but rather that man 
who says there is no God for you.” 

The former pastor of the Madison Presbyterian Church 


Peter Ainslie 


72 

in New York, Dr. Charles H. Parkhurst, once said: “ At 
one date one branch of the church would be making saints 
and another would be boiling and broiling them. There 
would be nothing to hinder ordaining unlovely, unloving 
Calvin even, if it were the occasion of sending Servetus 
to heaven in a chariot of fire.” This was to Ainslie the sin 
of schism, that men who differed from their fellows did not 
have grace enough to bear and forbear. 

In his earlier ministry he had given all his strength to 
the advancement of his Temple as a part of a communion 
which he stoutly defended and promoted. But when the 
fallacy of denominationalism began to offend his soul, he 
turned instead to think in terms of the whole church. It 
came to him as a strong conviction that the central motive 
of Christianity is love, and that divisions mark the absence 
of love’s fundamental quality. This urge in his mind was 
inspired, not so much by scriptural argument for unity, 
strong though this was, as by what he himself had discovered 
in his own experience. It became the ruling passion of his 
life. He had learned first at the bedside of his sick mother, 
then out of the pain of his boyhood’s experience, and fi¬ 
nally as a grown man, that the greatest compulsion in the 
world is love. This persuasion, sectarian division denied 
and thwarted. Ainslie’s conviction was that the trouble 
at the root of division was moral. Christians were unwill¬ 
ing to sacrifice prejudice and pride in their denomina¬ 
tions for the truth of fellowship. He was profoundly influ¬ 
enced by the statement of an English churchman who said: 
“ When I read your American denominational journals 
I cannot help but feel that the writers carry pistols and 
knives in their pockets with which to assault their 
brothers.” As Lincoln had vowed that he would strike 
a blow at slavery, whenever the chance offered, so Ainslie 


The Chrysalis Broken 


73 

now made a covenant with himself that he would contend 
against this scandal of division. 

The great change that has taken place in the last ten 
years in the general Christian attitude toward denomina- 
tionalism leaves us unprepared to appreciate the state of 
the ecclesiastical mind on that subject even a generation 
ago. It is difficult to believe that one brief lifetime could 
span such extremes of narrowness and prejudice in the 
religious mind of America as the bitter denominational- 
ism that existed forty years ago and the liberal thought 
that manifests itself in the search for fellowship which is 
going on today. 

Perhaps the picture of the theological barriers which 
shut good men off from one another is nowhere more 
clearly shown than in these lines by Dr. W. Russell Bowie 
in his Yale lectures: 

To hold that none have entered into the fullness of Chris¬ 
tian discipleship unless Christ means as much to them as he 
meant to those who wrote the Nicene Creed is one thing and 
a right thing; to say that no one loves Christ completely and 
exalts him as Lord unless he expresses or belongs to a com¬ 
munion which expresses Christian loyalty in the same words 
which the men of Nicea used is another thing and a very un¬ 
happy and mistaken one. 

The latter point of view has its staunch supporters even 
today in many areas of America. But it survives only as 
a relic of a fading past. Comparatively few can now be 
found who defend it. The tragic thing about it was that 
whereas it was offered as an evidence of “ conviction,” what 
it meant in practice was a broken body, and this was what 
made its effect so disastrous. How much of this transition 
can be attributed to such men as Ainslie we cannot fully 
estimate. But as we look back on the two decades of wit- 


Peter Ainslie 


74 

ness which he gave to this cause we cannot but believe that 
the happier mood existing among churches of the present 
generation owes much to his tireless energy and devotion. 
That he did a great deal to make sectarianism appear the 
sorry and sordid thing it is we cannot doubt. We owe it 
to ourselves and to posterity both as something due to 
him and as an encouragement and challenge to others to 
take up this cause with confidence. 


7 . Ambassador of Christian Unity 


AlNSLIE’ S long ambassadorship for Christian 
unity began with his speech at Topeka. Following his 
address he proceeded to call for a special session where 
those who were interested in the cause of amity might 
meet. The response he received was indicative of the 
hunger within his own religious group for a more inclu¬ 
sive fellowship. The place was overcrowded. The gen¬ 
eral desire to follow the example of Thomas Campbell in 
a new “Declaration and Address” to Protestantism was 
revealed. An organization was set up known as the 
“ Council on Christian Union,” later incorporated by 
Ainslie as the “ Association for the Promotion of Chris¬ 
tian Unity.” Ainslie was unanimously and enthusiasti¬ 
cally elected its president, as he had been its originating 
genius and its prophet. At once he sent a telegram of 
greeting to the Episcopal Commission on Unity, which 
was meeting that very day in Cincinnati, Ohio, where the 
Episcopal Church was assembled in its triennial conven¬ 
tion. 

Thus he entered upon his greater task of bridge-build¬ 
ing. Now that he had been officially commissioned by 
his own fellowship, he set out to give to the movement 
unstinted time and labor and widespread travel, preach¬ 
ing everywhere the gospel of unity. He whose traditions 
and training made him unsympathetic to ecclesiasticism 
now began to court churchmen in high office and urge 
upon them the need for action. He spoke to countless 

75 


Peter Ainslie 


7 6 

gatherings of the various denominations, pleading with 
them to let down the barriers of dogma and doctrine which 
kept Christendom divided. 

He made use also of the printed page. With the back¬ 
ing of Mr. R. A. Long of Kansas City, who came forward 
with a generous offer of financial help after the stirring 
address at Topeka, he launched a publication devoted 
wholly to fraternal appeals to a divided Protestantism. 
This was the Christian Union Quarterly, which during the 
twenty-five years of its existence was Ainslie’s own paper. 
Undaunted by the fact that it had few readers, he con¬ 
tinued it in enlarging proportions as its only editor until 
his death. He was not one to follow beaten paths, nor 
did he deal with his subject in ancient phrases borrowed 
from cherished documents of faith. As Rufus Jones said 
of him: 

It was not his scholarship we thought about, nor brilliance 
of speech, nor matchless style; it was the simplicity of speech, 
truth, honesty, reality of a good life. He had knowledge of 
acquaintance. He was admirably fitted to be a unifier because 
he lived and worked in a spirit of unity. 

The organization of the Inter-Church World Movement 
immediately following the World War of 1914 reinforced 
his confidence. That movement revealed a hunger beneath 
and beyond denominational barriers which gave new cour¬ 
age to many. True, the scheme collapsed all too quickly, 
for it had been promoted without adequate preparation. 
But notwithstanding its premature failure, the ideal be¬ 
hind it was not wholly lost to view and the daring plan 
never completely faded from believing minds. For men 
like Peter Ainslie, who had been waiting in the temple of 
hope for the appearance of some new messiah, it seemed 
the ground swell which presaged the rise of some move- 


Ambassador of Christian Unity 77 

ment that would be permanent and unifying. At any rate 
he took up his cause with greater devotion. 

His ambassadorship of Christian unity took Ainslie 
many times to Europe. In these contacts and conferences 
he came to realize what great distances were yet to be 
traveled and what patience it would be necessary to exer¬ 
cise in the task of winning any considerable measure of 
concord among the churches of Europe, and among those 
of America also, since most of the American denomina¬ 
tions had originated across the sea. An experience at a 
conference in Geneva, Switzerland, in 1920 showed him 
how deep was the chasm. Together with F. W. Burnham, 
Raphael H. Miller, Finis S. Idleman and H. C. Armstrong, 
Peter Ainslie had been appointed by the Council on Chris¬ 
tian Union to take part in that meeting, which was to set 
up the Faith and Order conference. A spokesman for the 
Eastern Orthodox Church — one of the distinguished and 
bearded retinue representing that fellowship — declared 
in his opening sentence, “ We have come a very long way.” 
Doubtless he was referring to the physical miles they had 
traveled (though it was a short distance compared with 
that which many others had come), but the remark could 
more appropriately have been applied to the ecclesiastical 
miles they had traversed. For a thousand years there had 
been no such contact between the so-called Eastern and 
Western churches. 

In this first meeting of representatives of widely sepa¬ 
rated denominational groups it was necessary, in order 
that all might become familiar with the issues, for each 
body to present a statement of its belief. Ainslie made the 
statement for the Disciples. The place which he gave in 
that statement to the Disciples’ emphasis on unity, and 
the winsome spirit in which he spoke, made a profound 


Peter Ainslie 


78 

impression on the delegates, many of whom knew noth¬ 
ing about this communion. Unfortunately one delegate 
arose to express his appreciation of a movement whose 
dominant emphasis was so nearly central to all that that 
conference had met to consider. He concluded by asking 
how it worked at home. Ainslie was compelled in all can¬ 
dor to reply that the Disciples were divided over the use 
of musical instruments, and nearly divided over the ques¬ 
tion of liberalism. 

It was in this and similar gatherings that Ainslie became 
fully aware of the mind and spirit of the various branches 
of the church universal. He learned the measure of 
generosity which it was needful for the communions to 
exercise toward one another. He became familiar with 
the values which each separate division of Christendom 
regarded as sacred and inviolable. He learned how highly 
the time element was esteemed in the thinking of the 
Christian leaders of Europe, where antiquity amounted 
to authority. He became aware of the delicacy with which 
men had to approach the various deposits of experience 
which these ancient branches of the church had stored up. 
He exercised himself in the technique of prudent approach 
which stood him in such good stead in the conferences he 
later conducted in America. 

He was often a disturbing guest at ecclesiastical confer¬ 
ences. On every occasion he proclaimed the equality of 
men in the sight of God and the necessity for recognition 
of one another as Christians. This Lochinvar both glad¬ 
dened and startled his fellow churchmen by the freshness 
and vigor of his words. When had anyone come with such 
eager devotion to the cause of the church’s unity or when 
had anyone made it so embarrassing to reject his reason¬ 
able proposals? As Bishop Vincent of Ohio said: 


Ambassador of Christian Unity 79 

The meetings of the American Commission on Christian 
Unity [of which Ainslie was a member] were not always har¬ 
monious but there was always one man there whose mind was 
so large, and whose spirit so harmonious, and who was so free 
from all limitations of creed and confession and ecclesiastical 
organization, that he embodied for us all the ideal unity of 
the church. 

Ainslie stood up in the conference at Lausanne, Swit¬ 
zerland, in 1927 and proposed that the many warm words 
there spoken for Christian unity be sealed by a common 
communion service. How simple and how sensible his 
proposal seemed — “but how unprecedented,” others 
commented. Ecclesiastical bodies which placed emphasis 
on the historic succession were most naturally shocked by 
a proposal which seemed to violate their traditions of 
centuries. 

But no subterfuge or substitute could satisfy Ainslie. 
He returned persistently to ask, “ Why not? ” and often 
made bishops and archbishops blush with confusion in 
their efforts to avoid this determined disturber of eccle¬ 
siastical regularity. 

While that particular communion service was not held, 
the suggestion could not be forgotten. “ If not, why not? ” 
the delegates went away asking. The query measured at 
once the difficulties of uniting all the branches of Chris¬ 
tianity into one church and the distance yet to be trav¬ 
eled. It took all pride of achievement out of the minds 
of delegates and humbled them before the lack of Christian 
spirit that had been revealed. 

This incident constituted another illustration of Ains- 
lie’s preference for direct methods. He spent little time 
with inconsequential but speedily discerned the vital 
weaknesses and centered his attack on these. He took to 
the councils of Christendom the habits of mind and action 


8o 


Peter Ainslie 


he had developed in his Baltimore parish. He was always 
willing to pay the greater price out of his own purse or 
comfort to gain the end which to him was clearly the 
will of God. As Dr. William Adams Brown said, “ To him 
the unity of Christ’s church was a plain duty, and where 
duty was concerned he could find no justification for de¬ 
lay.” He had great faith in the power of contagion. He 
believed that one bold brave action would be followed 
by like actions on the part of others. He even believed 
that a few brave men, gathered from various communions, 
could break the power of denominationalism and eventu¬ 
ally effect the unity of the church. On that hypothesis he 
struck out wherever new convictions led him. 

Indeed his first hope of the Association for the Promo¬ 
tion of Christian Unity, which he had founded at Topeka 
in 1910, was that it might accomplish that purpose. When 
at length he became convinced that it was too cumbersome 
and slow an instrument, when its effectiveness was in¬ 
hibited by minds that had too little courage or were too 
hesitant in their convictions, he let it pass into other hands 
and organized a new society which would have less ma¬ 
chinery and more daring. The Christian Unity League 
for Equality and Brotherhood was organized in 1927. In¬ 
stead of being made up of representatives from denomina¬ 
tional bodies who were constantly fearful of going beyond 
their party dogmas and traditions, this organization was 
composed of independent individuals from various com¬ 
munions, who had to answer only to their own consciences 
for any part they took or any action they endorsed toward 
unity. It was a freer society of more venturesome souls 
who, like soldiers driven to guerilla methods in defense 
of the right, could sally forth here or there, as occasion 
offered, to strike a blow for the liberation of those fettered 
folk in all communions who sought a way of closer asso- 


Ambassador of Christian Unity 81 

ciation. The league attempted to remove all the hinder¬ 
ing traditions that have destroyed Christian brotherhood, 
and encouraged the practice of open membership, open 
communion and open pulpits. Ainslie declared, “ The 
church has no moral right to practice closed membership, 
closed communion or closed pulpits.” 

It was characteristic of Ainslie that when an organiza¬ 
tion, even one he himself had formed, became an intoler¬ 
able weight, like Goliath’s sword and shield in the hands 
of young David, he would cast it aside for more effective 
instruments. He became convinced that denominational 
organizations created to foster the cause of unity were fu¬ 
tile. His experience led him to believe that only inter¬ 
church commissions could bring about interchurch fellow¬ 
ship. 

This new attitude was largely the outgrowth of Ainslie’s 
experience at Lausanne. Indeed Lausanne marked the 
second distinct curve in his approach to the problem of 
Christian unity. His attempt to make progress through 
denominational delegates had failed not only on account 
of the hesitancy of such representatives to act freely be¬ 
cause of the fear of group reactions, but more especially 
because that approach had been solely through attempts 
to reach an agreement on faith and order. Like St. Paul, 
Ainslie now decided to “ turn to the Gentiles.” Hence¬ 
forth he would build his conferences around men and 
women of a free spirit who would neither be bound to de¬ 
nominational thought nor wait upon the traditions of 
creeds and orders. Dr. Charles Clayton Morrison, writing 
in the first number of Christendom in 1935, summed up 
the effect of the Lausanne conference on Ainslie’s think¬ 
ing: 

Peter Ainslie returned home a changed man. . . . He could 
see that a basic fallacy underlay the procedure of any con- 


82 


Peter Ainslie 


ference having to do with faith and order; it was the erroneous 
assumption that our divisions (however they may have been 
caused, originally) are now maintained in virtue of profound 
convictions on creeds and orders, and that if we can come to 
an agreement on these questions our divisions will disappear. 
He challenged this assumption. Any method based upon it, 
he now saw, is sterile and futile. We can never reach Chris¬ 
tian unity by discussing doctrinal differences, he was now con¬ 
vinced. We can resolve doctrinal differences, if it is necessary 
to resolve them, only by affirming and practicing Christian 
unity. Unity is not a goal to be attained; it is the point from 
which we must set out if we would attain the great goals of 
Christian endeavor. Disunity and doctrinal differences are 
not commensurable. They do not stand in a sequence of cause 
and effect. They exist on wholly different levels. Disunity 
is not the unfortunate result of disagreements in the realm of 
history and doctrine; it is sin, and we are craftily using our 
disagreements to rationalize and justify our continuance in 
sin. Moreover, this sin, Ainslie reflected, is personal, as well 
as corporate, and must be repented of by individual Christians 
before there can be any hope of a united church. 

. . . He had long since lost the illusion that his own de¬ 
nomination, or any other, could be counted upon as an in¬ 
strument of unity. Now he has been disillusioned as to the 
fruitfulness of interdenominational conferences on doctrinal 
differences. He turns therefore to individual Christians in all 
communions, determined to lay upon their consciences the re¬ 
sponsibility for bringing about what he has now ceased to ex¬ 
pect by way of ecclesiastical initiative. Ecclesiastical action will 
come only when there has been developed among the laity 
and clergy of the churches a body of conviction and feeling 
sufficiently vigorous to call the various communions to cor¬ 
porate repentance. Individual repentance for the sin of schism 
must precede corporate repentance. And there is no possibil¬ 
ity of church unity until our disunity is seen to be not merely 
an ecclesiastical misfortune, but downright sin. 

These new insights and convictions led him to make a 
new appeal for unity, centered around a single phrase, 
“ The equality of all Christians before God.” He began 


Ambassador of Christian Unity 83 

to plan for a conference in New York city which would 
focus the attention of liberal-minded leaders of all reli¬ 
gious bodies. It was to be a demonstration of unity, cen¬ 
tered in the celebration of a communion service adminis¬ 
tered by representatives of various denominations. He 
easily won the cooperation of Dr. Carl Reiland, then rector 
of St. George’s Episcopal Church, who, with the hearty 
concurrence of his vestry, offered his church for the serv¬ 
ice. A large number of prominent Christian leaders joined 
in calling the conference, among them Dr. Charles E. Jef¬ 
ferson, President Hibben of Princeton University, Presi¬ 
dent Faunce of Brown University, Bishop Francis J. Mc¬ 
Connell, Dean Brown of Yale Divinity School, President 
Coffin of Union Theological Seminary, Dr. Norwood of 
St. Bartholomew’s Church, Dr. Charles Clayton Morrison, 
editor of the Christian Century, and many others. 

As has been said, the central service in this conference 
was to be the Lord’s Supper, to be observed with non- 
Episcopal ministers participating in its celebration. This 
act was to symbolize the unity of the clergy in their hope 
for the unity of the church. Dr. W. Russell Bowie, rector 
of Grace Episcopal Church of New York, Dr. Robert Nor¬ 
wood, rector of St. Bartholomew’s Church, and Dr. Howard 
Mellish, rector of Holy Trinity Church of Brooklyn, joined 
with Dr. Reiland in this attempt to break the tradition of 
closed communion in the Episcopal Church. The con¬ 
ference was widely publicized for many weeks with this 
central feature clearly announced. “ This thing was not 
done in a corner.” For some months the news of it was 
a matter of comment in religious circles. 

When the hour of the conference arrived it found a dis¬ 
tinguished company of Christians, clergy as well as laymen, 
assembled from the eastern half of the United States. The 
manifestations of the desire for unity were marked by en- 


Peter Ainslie 


84 

thusiasm and there was a general feeling that the united 
communion service would seal the cause. But on the day 
appointed for the service, a message came from the bishop 
of the diocese of New York requesting that it be not held 
in St. George’s Church. The bishop had the law of the 
state of New York as well as the canon law on his side. 
The conference could do nothing else than to yield to his 
request. It was a bitter blow for the liberal clergy of the 
Episcopal Church, many of whom had committed them¬ 
selves to this act of symbolic unity. But it was a keener 
disappointment to Ainslie and to those who shared with 
him understanding of the profound significance such a 
communion service might have and had come to this meet¬ 
ing with high hopes for the impetus it would give to the 
cause of unity. It was to have been an act such as few of 
those present had hoped to see in their lifetime. But the 
spirit of exclusiveness had not died nor had it lost its power. 
The bishop, no doubt conscientiously, employed that day 
the authority of tradition to throttle the new life that is 
everywhere seeking to be born. 

A second choice was forthcoming. Dr. Henry Sloane 
Coffin, president of Union Theological Seminary, came to 
the aid of the bewildered assembly. He offered St. James 
Chapel in Union Seminary as a place in which to hold the 
service. This offer was accepted and the service was cele¬ 
brated with two of the Episcopal clergymen, Dr. Reiland 
and Dr. Norwood, humbly participating as deacons who 
distributed the emblems. It was a deeply moving occa¬ 
sion. Something of the inward pain of the Master in the 
upper room lingered on in this company of his followers, 
shut away from their anticipated altar. It was all too 
clear that the churches had yet to learn that they cannot 
honor Jesus by dishonoring fellowship. The loss could 
not be wholly made up by Dr. Coffin’s generosity. The 


Ambassador of Christian Unity 85 

value of the original plan lay in the idea of permitting 
non-Episcopal ministers to share in the conduct of the 
communion service in an Episcopal church; that was lost. 
Recognition of one another’s priestly validity had been 
denied. No one suffered as much as Ainslie. Once again, 
as at Lausanne, he had met defeat. Here, as there, the 
force of tradition was too strong and he had to bow before 
it. He realized with a new pang that the great principle 
for which he was contending — recognition of the equal¬ 
ity of all Christians in the fellowship of an open com¬ 
munion — was still being denied. 

His keen disappointment on this and other occasions 
led Ainslie to write at that time: 

There were two questions . . . before me. Can any worth¬ 
while contribution be made to Christian unity by a denomi¬ 
nation working separately? Hardly. And can my denomina¬ 
tion be brought, in this day, to adopt love for the brethren — 
of all denominations — as the primary factor toward Christian 
unity? This likewise seemed hardly possible, certainly not in 
my generation. 

But his courage was undaunted. He began to center 
his approach upon a document which he drew up and dis¬ 
tributed widely. It was known as the “ Pact of Recon¬ 
ciliation.” He prefaced this statement with these words: 

As the time has now come when all Christians should be 
Christians to all other Christians, can Christianity survive if 
this is not done? Yes, it may survive in form, but the life and 
spirit which Jesus Christ reveals for the redemption of the 
world cannot function through a divided church. The two 
hundred different and independent organizations with more 
than half not on speaking terms with the other half, with some 
Christians refusing the Lord’s Supper to other Christians, other 
Christians refusing other Christians membership in their 
churches and the courtesy of their pulpits, the whole condition 
is ugly, awkward, and repugnant to modern intelligence. 


86 


Peter Ainslie 


The heart of the pact was as follows: 

We acknowledge the equality of all Christians before God 
and propose to follow this principle as far as possible, in all 
our spiritual fellowship. We will strive to bring the laws and 
practices of our several communions into conformity with this 
principle, so that no Christian shall be denied membership in 
any of our churches, nor the privilege of participation in the 
observance of the Lord’s Supper, and that no Christian min¬ 
ister shall be denied the freedom of our pulpits by reason of 
difference in forms of ordination. . . . 

We Christians of various churches, believing that only in a 
cooperative and united Christendom can the world be chris¬ 
tianized, affirm that a divided Christendom is opposed to the 
spirit of Christ and the needs of the world, and we are con¬ 
vinced that the christianizing of the world is greatly hindered 
by divisive and rivaling churches. 

Therefore we desire to express our sympathetic interest in 
a prayerful attitude toward all conferences, small and large, 
that are looking toward reconciliation of the divided Church 
of Christ. We propose to practice in all our spiritual fellow¬ 
ship the equality of all Christians before God so that no Chris¬ 
tians shall be denied membership in our churches, nor a place 
in our celebration of the Lord’s Supper, nor pulpit courtesies 
to other ministers, and further, irrespective of denominational 
barriers, we pledge to be brethren one to another in the name 
of Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior, whose we are and whom 
we serve. 

After securing the signatures of more than a thousand 
outstanding religious and professional leaders in all de¬ 
nominations, Ainslie literally sowed the American church 
with this famous reconciliation pact which Dr. Morrison 
called “ one of the most pregnant and illuminative insights 
in the history of the modern movement for unity.” 

Throughout the country Christians read his pact and, 
as a sign of their hearty agreement, set their names to it. 
Soon the letter-forms, each containing many names, began 
to pour into his office. For a time Ainslie tried to keep 


Ambassador of Christian Unity 87 

a list of all whose names were signed to this document, but 
finally gave up the effort. It was enough. The seed was 
being sown. A new idea had been planted and was find¬ 
ing root everywhere. The stoutest denominationalist 
found it very hard to combat this idea of equality, no mat¬ 
ter how superior he might feel his communion to be in 
matters of faith and doctrine. It divided the church be¬ 
tween the self-satisfied who thanked God that they were 
not like other men and the humble in spirit who prayed 
God to be merciful unto them. It reached the heart of 
the best intelligence of the generation. Here was an ap¬ 
proach to unity which no ecclesiastical authority could 
interdict and no denominational machinery control. It 
was in the hands of the individual laymen. It passed by 
the shepherds of the sectarian folds and made its appeal 
to the individual disciple, no matter where he was or to 
what group he belonged or through what forms he wor¬ 
shiped. It was unofficial and therefore free. It was as 
simple and direct and inclusive as the Declaration of 
Independence. To the millions who will doubtless read 
it in the centuries to come, it will seem as a great light set 
on a hill in the twentieth century. 

Under so noble and free a banner, Peter Ainslie became 
an inspired prophet and ambassador of good will to all 
the churches. He was a much sought-after guest at reli¬ 
gious gatherings. To mention his name was to call to 
mind the forgotten prayer of Jesus “ that they all may be 
one.” The common people heard his message gladly be¬ 
cause they understood it. His appeal was in no creedal 
or theological terminology. It began with God the one 
Father and ended with each believing disciple as the ob¬ 
ject of His affection. Always it breathed the passion of 
the Master for the “ other sheep.” It was as simple as the 
demonstration of Columbus that the world is round. It 


88 


Peter Ainslie 


was an avowal as affirmative as it was inclusive, rebuking 
sectarianism by its exalted affirmation and making divi¬ 
sions to appear “ exceeding sinful.” It was intended to 
supply the last proof of fellowship, one that could be put 
to the test by the realities of life. 

To Peter Ainslie the sin of division was not only a sin 
against the mind of Christ but also a vast tragedy for the 
church in the presence of its supreme opportunity. Once 
he said: “ What a challenge this hour is for Christendom 
to set its own house in order before it further infects the 
Eastern world with sectarianism that robs the gospel of its 
corporate power and gives the people a stone instead of 
bread.” 

He said everywhere that he was seeking to compel each 
sect to look to its own house and sin in a way that “ would 
reveal the thin crust of shallow reality which gave its 
separateness standing”; that “every divisive and sectarian 
practice and preachment must be seen as sin.” 

This pact became the charter not only of the Christian 
Unity League but also of the many conferences on unity 
of which Peter Ainslie was the moving spirit. Here was 
a principle which gave courage to kindred souls of all com¬ 
munions, who had like passion for this cause. It restored 
to them the liberty of expression which had been so long 
suppressed, and allowed them to meet and take counsel 
without let or hindrance. It did not propose a merger of 
churches, nor a federated course of common action. It 
went above and beyond federation and cooperation. It 
was a standard for all those children of God who looked 
upon their fellows as equally children of God. It assumed 
a common heritage and a common devotion to a common 
cause. Here was a mutual recognition of brotherhood on 
the basis of a free fellowship and a common loyalty to 
Jesus, their Master. All the conferences based on the prin- 


Ambassador of Christian Unity 89 

ciples of the pact were a concrete demonstration of the 
“ unity of the spirit in the bond of peace.” 

One can interpret the boldness of this proposal only by 
regarding it in the light of American sectarianism and its 
history of tragic divisions and subdivisions for the last 
hundred years. In the unfettered political freedom of 
America, Protestantism ran riot. A small grain of truth 
was often magnified into a granary. Here and there a 
strong man found what he thought was a neglected text 
and expanded it into a revelation, or seized upon some 
vagary which for the moment appealed to him. It was 
not so much a passion to save men that one observes in this 
period, but the passion of small groups to save men ac¬ 
cording to their peculiar conceptions of salvation. Con¬ 
sequently, a century of religious life in America was 
marred by the hard and argumentative spirit wherein each 
sought to prove his own point of view correct and his 
neighbor’s wrong. Competitive sects wasted not only the 
people’s spiritual substance but, worse still, their poten¬ 
tial capacity for good living. The well remembered re¬ 
tort of one stout disputant, who could be brought no 
nearer to tolerance than to say, “ You go on in your way 
and I will go in His,” is quite typical of the mood of the 
American church during the nineteenth century. Non¬ 
recognition of any mutuality of Christian standing or of 
ministerial station was common, and its sinfulness scarcely 
dawned even upon the best people in the churches. Ex¬ 
clusiveness was taken as the proper attitude of “ loyalty.” 

Then came this daring spirit who “ saw things whole.” 
He called this nonrecognition “ the scandal of Christian¬ 
ity.” He wrote a book under this title. The burden of 
this volume is that the scandal is not in differing over sec¬ 
ondary matters, for there must always be diversity of opin¬ 
ion in any permanent unity, but in “ making these differ- 


90 


Peter Ainslie 


ences the occasions for unbecoming behavior of one group 
of Christians toward another group of Christians”; that 
when the World War ended the churches were, “ through 
their sectarian interpretation of religion, left lying in the 
dust and Christianity stalked forth as a skeleton of form, 
blind and deaf to the moral and social crimes of the 
world that divisions were “ not only pagan but im¬ 
moral.” 

In view of this impasse between the churches, Ainslie’s 
appeal for recognition on the basis of equality and brother¬ 
hood put the denominationalist in an embarrassing posi¬ 
tion. For, as Ainslie said, “ to dissent from equality leaves 
the dissenters in an awkward attitude. They have no 
whips with which to chide and no anathemas with which 
to curse.” 

Open communion, open pulpits and open membership 
became the new watchwords of this ambassador of Chris¬ 
tian unity. There were few denominations which he did 
not stab with conviction by this triple-headed javelin, de¬ 
claring that 

there are many barriers to unity but there are three immediate 
barriers to full fellowship in Protestant Christianity. Three- 
fourths of the church refuses the Lord’s Supper to other Chris¬ 
tians while the other fourth refuses them membership in their 
churches and courtesies in their pulpit. The whole condition 
is awkward and repugnant to modern intelligence. 

His last issue of the Christian Union Quarterly, which 
was his instrument for carrying a world-wide appeal in 
the interest of Christian unity, published his closing words 
on this subject: 

I am as strongly bound to Jesus as I know how, and there¬ 
fore, bound to every follower of Jesus, irrespective of class or 
race or creed. Some day the spirit of Jesus will find its outlet 
in the world through a real brotherhood among his followers. 


Ambassador of Christian Unity 91 

I can help a little toward it, as can every one of his disciples, 
by being unafraid to make experiments in love of the brethren 
and I propose to work at it as long as I live. For myself I do 
not want to see Christ either in prayer or in eternity with 
any less fellowship than that of the whole church of God. 

And with these words he dropped his pen which had so 
consistently championed this cause nearest his heart. 

The following summary of Ainslie’s ambassadorship to 
the churches was written by the author for the Christian 
unity number of the Christian-Evangelist, September 14, 
! 939 * 

The distinct contribution of Peter Ainslie to the cause of 
Christian unity lay chiefly in his spirit, rather than in any 
proposals he inaugurated. In this particular there were three 
factors: 

The first was his passion for the reunion of the church. 

In this respect he was scarcely exceeded in his generation. 
The sorrows of a divided church amounted to him as a scan¬ 
dal. The evils of sectarian and denominational barriers were 
a burden on his soul. Like Cato the Elder repeating “ Car¬ 
thage must be destroyed,” he went about ceaselessly saying, 
“ Sectarianism must be destroyed.” For him, every theme led 
to the insistence upon the unity of the church. Every trouble 
of the human race rooted back into this wrong. So ardently 
did he believe that disunion was a sin against the Holy Spirit 
that it was unpardonable in his mind. He planted the seed 
of his advocacy in the minds of young Christians and he led 
their elders to counsel how the wounds of a divided household 
might be healed. 

With the passion of the men who hunted down the apostle 
Paul, refusing to eat or drink until he should be taken captive, 
so did Peter Ainslie forget the current absorptions of the day, 
in his burning desire for the unity of the church. In the 
language of Gamaliel Bradford, it became his “ one unchanged 
obsession wheresoe’er his feet had trod.” Just as one heart 
sets another heart on fire, so his strong passion for unity 
kindled a fire across the nation, and into other nations where 


Peter Ainslie 


92 

his work and influence spread. This, then, was his first dis¬ 
tinct contribution to unity, his all-consuming passion. 

His second contribution was the medium of his person¬ 
ality, through which diverse minds could meet. He was most 
at home in leading conferences on Christian unity. The tem¬ 
per of the average man who guards the faith of his particular 
communion was put at ease by Ainslie’s spirit of fair-minded¬ 
ness. Like the gentle pastoral figure of Isaiah, he could be 
patient with the young. Every speaker was given time and 
liberty, and those who might have come with a controversial 
spirit usually remained to pray. The medium of his willing¬ 
ness to listen, and his power to absorb punishment during long 
hours when unimportant discussions cleared lesser minds of 
fearfulness, all this combined to fit him for mediation between 
differing minds. Possibly Ainslie will be missed more from 
this realm than from any other. 

There are few men good enough to submit themselves to 
be ground to powder between the upper and nether millstones 
of the trivial against the trivial. It all seems so futile. The 
actual gain made by listening to endless dissertations on the 
inconsequential of denominational interpretation soon ex¬ 
hausts the most saintly. This was the unique service Peter 
Ainslie rendered in his time: he could listen. In every gather¬ 
ing of Christian representatives where he presided, the least 
conspicuous participant soon became assured of a friend. The 
consciousness of relative littleness was soon forgotten. 

Ainslie magnified the office of mediatorship. He took up 
this difficult job as a necessary piece of the task of reconcilia¬ 
tion. He took the way of the mediator, which is the way of 
the cross, in order to unite all men in the mind of Christ. 
This was the second contribution, and perhaps the greatest, 
that Peter Ainslie made to the slow process of attaining unity 
among the churches. 

His third contribution was the element of grace that was 
within him. 

Now it was the essence of Ainslie’s mind that he had this 
grace to deal inoffensively with sometimes offensive people. 
No sharpness was ever remembered. The door for mutual 
approach was always left open, the atmosphere of kindliness 
was preserved even at the cost of more intelligent contribution. 

Passion, mediation, grace; these are the chief contributions 



Ambassador of Christian Unity 93 

of Peter Ainslie to Christian unity. They kept the way open 
for counsel and conference, which otherwise might have re¬ 
mained a wall. What other contributions he made in the 
realm of intellectual liberation and illumination as certain 
methods of approach, or of theological paths cleared, are not 
now so impressive as one surveys the record of his service in 
this cause. It may appear at long last that not ideas, but spirit 
may have better served the Kingdom. If so, Peter Ainslie will 
be remembered as one of the elect who bore permanent wit¬ 
ness to the unity of the church, and the way to its attainment: 
patience, mediation, and grace, and the greatest of these is 
grace. 

He offered a proposal which thousands signed. It was called 
the “ Pact of Reconciliation.” Possibly he would rather be 
remembered as its author than by any other emanation from 
his mind. But what are the few thousands among the many 
millions who still constitute the warp and woof of denomina- 
tionalism, and what results from this pact have led to concrete 
and substantial movements toward unity? Such union move¬ 
ments as have arisen within religion since his death, or such 
as are being contemplated, either are within denominational 
family circles, or are being conducted on quite other bases 
than the “ Pact of Reconciliation.” While it is impossible to 
estimate how much influence that noble conception may have 
had, and still is having, upon the Christian church, yet it re¬ 
mains a random guess to attempt to weigh the value of that 
document. 

But those who signed it, and all who may read it hereafter, 
must be elevated in mind by its comprehensive inclusiveness. 
It must continue to weigh upon the conscience of Christian 
leaders for generations to come. It has the flavor of the 
Beatitudes and can be fairly judged only after centuries have 
passed. 


% 


8. A ins tie as a Churchman 


IT WAS most fortunate for Peter Ainslie that 
the administrator in him never overshadowed the pas¬ 
tor and the prophet. He loved the church and so gave 
himself to it that, had he been a member of a communion 
which had bishops, his sense of duty might have obliged 
him to accept such office. In that event the contribution 
he was able to make toward Christian unity might never 
have been possible. The prophet in him would have been 
smothered in an environment which did not offer full 
scope for the experimentation and exploration necessary 
for such a leader to do. Furthermore, the capacity to 
supervise was not a part of his peculiar mental equipment. 
That task requires more methodical and detailed and ex¬ 
act labor than he was interested in giving. His reverence 
for the individual always would have got in the way of 
his efficiency. One human appeal anywhere along his path 
could always stop him. One inconsequential but impor¬ 
tunate questioner could prevent him from being punctual 
on a platform where he was to address a thousand. No 
place to which he was going was ever so important as the 
person who had just now broken into his presence. Peo¬ 
ple were always more important to him than organizations. 

Peter Ainslie passed away just as the modern resurgence 
of the emphasis on the church was beginning to absorb the 
Christian mind. He had seen the liberal movement come 
to its flower. During his lifetime the modern missionary 
movement had reached its climax and evangelism had come 

94 


Ainslie as a Churchman 


95 

to its greatest ascendancy. He had no small part in all 
these developments. A conception of religion as a matter 
of personal faith and conversion and worship was vital in 
his advocacy. He was even deeply impressed by the 
“ Faith ” missionary movements and the China Inland Mis¬ 
sion, which were sporadic and had no denominational 
rootage. While he believed in cooperation through church 
organizations as a matter of economy and assurance, he 
had a wide sympathy for all men and movements that were 
venturesome enough to explore new avenues or make new 
experiments as acts of faith. He would never shut himself 
within the boundaries of any organization, not even within 
the church as an ecclesiasticism. Any closed conception 
of the church that arrogated to itself the function of medi¬ 
ating divine grace made him impatient. He went far afield 
from the idea that a man could be converted only through 
the church, and utterly rejected the conception that salva¬ 
tion was to be found solely through its ministrations and 
sacraments. He welcomed every man who without shib¬ 
boleths or ecclesiastical traditions had found new or un¬ 
tried ways of rediscovering God. 

Yet during the years that he sought to work through it, 
no man was more heartily welcomed by the high-church 
party than was he. Something about his sense of reverence 
for all that other men and generations had found good in 
religion made ecclesiastics generally extend to him a hand 
of cordial fellowship. They could feel that in him they 
had found an understanding and appreciative mind, how¬ 
ever nonconformist in practice he might be. 

Moreover, no man could sit more unweariedly through 
endless conferences. He who had appeared to break away 
from the machinery in which religion had involved itself 
now seemed, oddly enough, a valiant champion of the 
organized church. Those who knew him yesterday as a 


Peter Ainslie 


96 

leader of a renaissance of religious liberty, emancipated 
from all the fettering weights of ecclesiasticism, might now 
behold him sitting with the doctors and the lawyers who 
were exponents of all he had opposed. On what ground 
can the Ainslie of almost two-score years of advocacy of 
fierce individualism be made one with the Ainslie of later 
years who spent himself in endless endeavor to acquaint 
churchmen with churchmen? 

Anyone who interprets this phenomenon as indicative of 
a change in his convictions or as a proof that ripening years 
had led him to believe that the hope of a free religion lay 
in the organized church as a corporate body, reckons with¬ 
out true understanding of the man. Those who most inti¬ 
mately shared his latter days were persuaded that his patient 
courtship of the ecclesiastics of his generation was due not 
so much to any change of conviction concerning the 
church as to his deepening love of his fellow men. His 
desire for the reunion of the church was part of his desire 
for interracial and international good will. It was because 
he had become, not more theological, but more social, 
that he thus gave himself to the “ Una Sancta.” Much as 
he desired Christian unity, he desired the “ one great so¬ 
ciety ” of men still more. His burning concern was that 
men and women of all faiths might come to share one an¬ 
other’s deepest interests and to enjoy the mutual tasks and 
common good which tolerant men had discovered in their 
several spheres. The kingdom he went out to build was 
not a form of ecclesiastical authority, but the Kingdom 
of God wherein love and good will would reign over the 
whole of human affairs. 

It would have violated his most fundamental convictions 
if the divided church as he knew it had suddenly united 
on some fixed conception of a sacred system outside which 
worship could not properly be offered or conversion take 


Ainslie as a Churchman 


97 

place. Desirable as the one church was to him, it was only 
because it would prove the most serviceable medium 
through which the spirit of man might ascend in adoration 
to God, and then proceed from God to render humble 
service to his fellows. The divided church, in his mind, 
causes a man to sin against his fellow men in antisocial 
ways. A united church would offer to man the undivided 
family of God as the widest possible area for his love and 
helpfulness. It is quite consistent with all that he said 
and wrote to say that if the unity of the race could have 
been achieved without an organized church, Peter Ainslie 
would not have felt robbed of any indispensable good. His 
esteem for the Friends, widely and generously proclaimed, 
was but one of many indications of his nonecclesiastical 
mind. He loved the church because it was a means to a 
high end, not an end in itself. That end was our one hu¬ 
manity which had no other equal or comparable means 
for attaining its destined goal. The church had not arrived 
in its totality. The conceptions men had formed of it were 
still capable of readjustment and of enlargement. 

It was not astonishing, therefore, that Ainslie, the puri¬ 
tan, should have been so readily accepted by the high 
churchmen both of America and of Europe. It is easy for 
one inclined toward ecclesiastical conformity to read into 
his mind what was never there, namely, a doctrinal con¬ 
ception of the church which was opposed to nonconform¬ 
ity. It was true that he was at home with high churchmen 
and archbishops, not because he shared their theological 
points of view but rather because he could be all things 
to all men for the sake of a united church. His Virginian 
gentility could easily be mistaken for high churchmanship. 
His inborn dignity and courtesy made him appear much 
at home among the ecclesiastically elect. But anyone 
tempted to classify him as being inclined to conformity 


Peter Ainslie 


98 

has only to recall his disappointment over the ecclesiastical 
opposition to a common communion service in the Chris¬ 
tian union conferences he organized. Earlier in his life 
he revealed his mind in the following paragraph: 

I was greatly impressed with Alexander Campbell’s freedom 
and catholicity. He gave me a new awakening on the scandal 
of denominationalism, and his logic enabled me to see in my 
own denomination that which he condemned in all denomi¬ 
nationalism. Campbell also awakened my interest in Bible 
study. One of his great statements that went deep down into 
my thinking was: “ I have endeavored to read the Scriptures 
as though no one had read them before me; and I am as much 
on my guard against reading them today through the medium 
of my own views yesterday or a week ago, as I am against being 
influenced by any foreign name, authority, or system what¬ 
soever.” 

After the Lausanne conference, of course, when it sud¬ 
denly became clear to Ainslie that unity could not be 
achieved “ from the top ” — that is, through the high office¬ 
holders of the churches — but must come “ from the bot¬ 
tom,” he frequently absented himself from the gatherings 
of hierarchs. He was following another trail now. But 
always he was a liberal and a democrat, at whatever cost. 
If he seemed hospitable to groups interested chiefly in 
the doctrines of the church, it was for the sake of under¬ 
standing and fellowship. At long last he remained always 
a puritan with the puritan conception of religion. He 
could be attentive and receptive, but here as everywhere 
he was “ velvet to the touch and granite to the push.” A 
cavalier by birth and education, he was a puritan in spirit. 

We can best do Ainslie justice in attempting to interpret 
his conception of the church by introducing a poem of his 
found in the Christian Union Quarterly of April 1934. 
It is his best reflection on this subject. As the poet is always 


Ainslie as a Churchman 


99 

prophet and seer, giving the truest perceptions of the mind, 
we leave this analysis of Ainslie’s churchmanship in the 
following verses: 

Forgive, O Lord, our severing ways. 

The separate altars that we raise, 

The varying tongues that speak Thy praise! 

Suffice it now. In time to be 
Shall one great temple rise to Thee, 

Thy church our broad humanity. 

White flowers of love its walls shall climb. 

Sweet bells of peace shall ring its chime. 

Its days shall be all holy time. 

The hymn, long sought, shall then be heard. 

The music of the world’s accord, 

Confessing Christ, the inward Word! 

That song shall swell from shore to shore, 

One faith, one love, one hope restore. 

The seamless garb that Jesus wore! 



9. Ambassador of Peace 


A MIND so set as was Peter Ainslie’s upon the 
unity of the churches would naturally glow with equal ar¬ 
dor for peace among the nations. Everything that made 
his soul revolt against the unhappy spectacle of a divided 
church kindled in him a resistless passion to create under¬ 
standing and good will among hostile peoples. He con¬ 
ceived the task of creating unity as one, whether it con¬ 
cerned the churches or the races or the nations. This did 
not mean that he was a dabbler in many causes, but only 
that he was a tireless advocate of the one great cause, good 
will. To him, these various causes were inextricably 
bound together. One could not prosper unless all pros¬ 
pered. If he placed greater emphasis on Christian unity, 
this was because he considered it the primary responsibility 
of the church to bring about its own unity in order that 
it might establish a kindred unity of spirit among races 
and nations. 

Peter Ainslie was born in an atmosphere of peace. The 
unhurried life of his community made for it. The spirit 
of the manse made for it. His first lesson at school was 
the discipline of self-restraint when he was set upon by 
his fellow pupils. By temperament he was disinclined to 
violence. The conception of love and forgiveness planted 
by his mother in his childish mind bore magnificent fruit. 
If the boy for a time worshiped the memory of Napoleon, 
the glory of that hero soon became dimmed, and another 
hero, Tolstoy, took his place. In the great Russian prophet 

IOO 


Ambassador of Peace 


101 


of peace the growing Peter found a kindred spirit whose 
influence upon him became ever greater. Later in life he 
paid a great tribute to Tolstoy: 

There was no other such fine and free interpreter of Jesus 
in his day as the Russian idealist. A real Christian! Yet he 
was excommunicated by one of the largest denominations of 
Christendom because he had been judged by the Orthodox as 
a heretic, and his excommunication was concurred in by most 
of the other denominations. I began to feel the biting atmos¬ 
phere of an unfree and unspiritual church. I did not doubt 
God for a moment, but I became skeptical as to the direction to¬ 
ward which the churches were headed. Although they were 
not having much to do with each other, they were all headed in 
the same direction of denominational pride and denomina¬ 
tional achievement. There appeared to be no moral sense in 
their leadership relative to general hatred against other nations 
and the practice of mass murder of the population of other 
nations, although great missionary programs were in opera¬ 
tion! 

Tolstoy released me from orthodox thinking on social prob¬ 
lems. I had no further difficulty in finding my way to what 
seemed to me a finer standard in international affairs than 
the churches had dared to champion. I decided definitely never 
to make another address on war except to denounce it, nor 
would I have anything to do with war under any circumstances, 
even though my country became involved. 

In the development of Ainslie’s pacifism, the influence 
of the Quakers also counts for much. He became ac¬ 
quainted with their views early in his life. “ Their posi¬ 
tion,” he later wrote, 

helped me very much. I was heartened to know that there were 
some Christians whose denominational tenets were against the 
use of war for adjusting disputes. They are a small group, but 
they have convictions that war is the wrong method; and they 
have not been afraid to affirm their belief through many years, 
while the larger denominations had no conviction on the un¬ 
ethical machinery of war, except in rare instances of individ¬ 
uals here and there. 


102 


Peter Ainslie 


Nevertheless, the absolute pacifistic position which Ains¬ 
lie later took was the result, not merely of temperament, 
but of long thought and study. From the very beginning, 
however, he contended in his public utterances for the 
theory that love will win over any alienation, and put that 
conviction to the test wherever he encountered hostility 
either toward himself or toward movements of which he 
was a part. “ Why do you let people hurt you? ” he was 
always saying. “ If someone fails in attitude or act to do 
the decent thing toward you, it is his loss of character — not 
yours. Be hurt about your own acts and settle that with 
God.” And in one of his books he wrote: 

Forgiveness is the first qualification in the discipleship of 
Jesus. It is not something we may do; it is something we must 
do. My mother laid constantly upon my heart this teaching of 
Jesus when I was a mere boy, and it radiated from her through¬ 
out our village life. 

I was greatly helped when a distinguished minister and 
friend of my father visited me once. He inquired about the 
trouble I was having with a fellow minister whom I had helped. 
I told him I did not like to tell it, for I had discovered that the 
oftener I repeated it the more difficult it was to suppress resent¬ 
ment; but he insisted on knowing at first hand some of the 
points. I made them as brief as possible. When I got through, 
he said: “ I have never been treated as badly as that. You 
have an opportunity that I never had.” Opportunity? I had 
never thought of it in that light. 

Of course it was an opportunity to forgive. If one has not 
been treated badly he has nothing to forgive. I had a real job 
and I saw it. My father’s friend made my victory easier, and 
later I discovered that there was no ill-feeling in my heart 
against the young minister. But that is not enough. I recalled 
one of the great sentences of Trench, who was a favorite in my 
father’s library: “ The rule of life is that thou shalt render good 
for thy brother’s ill; the shape in which thou shalt render it, 
love shall prescribe.” 


Ambassador of Peace 103 

The following instance is quite typical of Ainslie. Rev. 
Daniel Somers was for many years editor of the Octo- 
graphic Review. This journal was the mouthpiece of the 
very considerable body that withdrew from the Disciples 
on the ground that the organ was an unscriptural instru¬ 
ment and as such not to be employed in the worship of 
the church. Gradually many other irritating differences 
of opinion gathered about this original dispute. The 
situation became more acute as Somers vigorously cham¬ 
pioned this separate movement. The all but irreconcila¬ 
ble cleavage within the Disciples —a movement which had 
been organized to foster Christian unity — became very 
embarrassing. 

Ainslie invited Somers to come to Baltimore and spend 
a week as his guest. Somers accepted the invitation. For 
seven days Ainslie showed him every courtesy within his 
power, gave himself to his guest with utter abandon, even 
persuaded him to preach to the Temple congregation. 
The mooted question was silenced by Ainslie’s explana¬ 
tion to the worshipers that out of respect to the guest 
preacher the service would be conducted without the use 
of the organ. That deference, together with Ainslie’s gra¬ 
cious patience in hearing Somers through to the last word 
of his seemingly inconsequential argument, completely 
won the mind of the erstwhile bitter critic. When at 
length he returned home Somers declared he could no 
longer dispute with so good a man. 

Possibly no single event in Ainslie’s life revealed more 
fully his capacity to be a mediating influence than his 
experience with the Grand Army of the Republic. To 
his astonishment he once received an invitation to preach 
before these veterans at their annual encampment. It is 
to be remembered that Peter Ainslie was born in Virginia 


Peter Ainslie 


104 

three years after the close of the Civil War, and in his 
early life must have shared the keen disappointment over 
the defeat of the south and the dismay over the social chaos 
incident to the release of the slaves. It would have been 
surprising had he not drunk in the dominant passions then 
running like a fever through his contemporaries. No 
doubt he had to struggle to overcome this resentful atti¬ 
tude. Overcome it he certainly did. Nevertheless, that 
he, a southern minister, a Virginian by birth and breeding, 
should receive this invitation to preach before the vet¬ 
erans of the north, seemed beyond comprehension. But 
he accepted, in the hope that he might help heal the scars 
the war had left on both north and south. Let him tell the 
story: 

There was something suspicious and embarrassing about the 
reception received when I reached my host’s home, a few blocks 
from the station. My southern accent brought from him at 
once the question as to which side my relatives were on in the 
Civil War. When I told him that they were on the southern 
side, I was suddenly left alone in the room as though I had a 
contagious disease. I entertained myself for several hours by 
browsing among the books on a center table. One on Jefferson 
Davis, written with a vitriolic pen, particularly interested me; 
another on Robert E. Lee was equally bitter. I scanned these 
with intense interest until I saw coming up the walk to the 
house some of the men whom I had seen at the station, all wear¬ 
ing their reception paraphernalia. The maid ushered them 
into the room without announcement. I arose immediately, 
introducing myself and shaking hands with each of them. They 
took their seats and the spokesman, a stocky and abrupt man, 
went straight to the subject. He said: 

“ I am sorry to inform you that the colonel made a great 
mistake in inviting you here. Some of us had read your ser¬ 
mons on the labor problem in the daily papers here in the west 
and we concluded that you were a northern man and a man 
much older than you appear to be. Besides, the colonel is run- 


Ambassador of Peace 


105 

ning for Congress this year. It is going to be a close election 
anyway and this thing will hurt him. It would never do to 
have a southern man preach a sermon at the national encamp¬ 
ment of the Grand Army of the Republic. We men went 
through the war and some of us feel that we do not care to 
have a southern man to preach to us! ” 

When there was an opportunity to respond, I said: “ I see 
no occasion for any embarrassment either to you or to me. 
There is a train going east about midnight. I shall take that 
train. In order that no item of any payments to me may ap¬ 
pear on your books, you need not even reimburse me for my 
expenses in making the trip here. I came on the railroad pass 
which your committee kindly sent me, so that I shall be out 
very little. Such an adjustment will be entirely satisfactory 
to me.” 

“ But,” said the spokesman, “ this thing will get out. It may 
not do you any harm but it will ruin the Grand Army. We 
have made a great mistake.” I said: “ I am perfectly willing to 
withdraw. But I was born after the Civil War, and am I to 
understand that you men of the north want to extend your 
animosities to the southerners of my generation? ” 

We had an interesting conversation for fully an hour before 
they withdrew, informing me that a meeting of the full com¬ 
mittee had been called for the evening, and that I would be 
informed of their decision. It was nearly midnight when two 
of the committee called and informed me that they had decided 
that I should deliver the annual sermon as originally planned, 
and bade me goodnight. 

I preached. Some of the reception committee occupied the 
front seats. After the services were over, they held a brief con¬ 
sultation and informed me that it was their wish that I should 
deliver the same sermon that evening in the largest auditorium 
in the town. But I declined, having performed my part of the 
original agreement, and I left for the east that afternoon with 
many misgivings on war. 

That sermon was published in full in the town paper, 
and the following excerpts appeared in many of the daily 
papers throughout the country: 


io6 


Peter Ainslie 


I come with no apology from my fair southern land, whose 
escutcheon is still untarnished; from her defeated battlefields 
arises a fragrance sweeter than the fragrance of a crushed flower. 
With uncovered head, and heart heaving with deep emotion, I 
stand amid her graves, her marble shafts, her broken swords and 
her mildewed flags, and I believe that I am standing on sacred 
ground. Yet I lift up everlasting thanksgiving that God Al¬ 
mighty threw the dice of battle and lifted the nightmare of 
human slavery from the American republic and preserved our 
sisterhood of states into a compact union. In the words of the 
goldenhearted Grady, “ Now, what answer have the men of the 
north to this question? Will you permit the prejudice of war 
to be kept alive in the hearts of the conquerors when it has died 
in the hearts of the conquered? ” 

I would gather the burst balls, the broken bayonets, rusty 
swords, and old worn-out muskets, and I would pile them into 
a great heap, but above them all I would place the document of 
emancipation that broke the shackles of American slavery as 
far greater than all the battles in the war between the states, 
prophetic of the time when the arts and implements of war 
shall be declared as remnants of a barbarous age, and the hu¬ 
man mind and human heart, under the meridian splendor of 
divine grace, shall solve all problems in courts of justice, until 
humanity has grown into the likeness of its God. 

He had won his audience; he, a southerner, had made 
good among northerners. He left the city with the sweet 
consciousness of having fulfilled his ambassadorship. 

The Spanish-American War was Ainslie’s first direct 
encounter with large-scale violence. His thought on war 
had not yet reached maturity, but he protested against par¬ 
ticipation in this war both because offensive action was 
unnecessary and because war was opposed to the mind of 
Christ. There was as yet no general Christian sentiment 
on the subject. The church tended to go along with the 
state, as it had usually done wherever and whenever hin¬ 
drance to the state’s greed or ambition made war seem rea¬ 
sonable and right. Save for a small contingency of Friends 


Ambassador of Peace 


107 

and similarly minded religious groups, there was no agita¬ 
tion on the subject of Christian conscience and the sword. 
Yet in this no man’s land of inert Christianity Ainslie ven¬ 
tured to lift his solitary voice in protest. 

The outbreak of the World War in 1914 precipitated 
Ainslie's thought on violence. Now his temperament and 
his mind came to a focus. His study had thoroughly pre¬ 
pared him to defend on a material as well as on a moral 
level the conviction to which his intuition had long led 
him, and he took his stand openly as a pacifist. 

The beginning of the conflict found him in Paris on a 
mission of Christian unity. He saw a continent set on fire 
with the passions of war. Though he had little hope of the 
effort, he joined Graham Taylor in calling on a London 
editor and conferring with that gentleman on ways to stop 
this senseless attempt to settle international differences by 
force. But matters had gone so far that no nation would 
heed the voice of conciliation. Returning to New York, 
Ainslie went directly to the home of Andrew Carnegie, 
whose gift of twenty million dollars had just endowed the 
Church Peace Union as a new agency of the Church Uni¬ 
versal. 

“ How far are you willing to go for peace among the na¬ 
tions? ” Carnegie asked Ainslie. Ainslie answered, “ I 
don’t think there can be peace among the nations until war 
is abolished.” “ You surely don’t think there will ever be 
another war among the civilized nations? ” asked Carnegie. 
Peter Ainslie replied: “ I think it is inevitable so long as 
extensive preparations are being made for it as is evident in 
Europe. I have followed Tolstoy so closely on this subject 
that I have adopted his philosophy, recognizing the impos¬ 
sibility of averting it.” Carnegie asked, “ Will you support 
such a war?” “No,” answered Ainslie, “long ago I de¬ 

cided that I would never support any war. Until there are 


io8 


Peter Ainslie 


enough people who refuse to use arms and to support war, 
we are going to have war.” “ But,” asked Carnegie, “ have 
you counted the cost of your refusal? ” “Yes,” answered 
Ainslie, “ if my government sends me to prison for my re¬ 
fusal, I shall endeavor to make converts of the prisoners to 
this ideal. Or if my government orders me to be shot, I 
would much rather be shot by my government because I 
contend for a moral principle than to be shot by the enemy 
whom I tried to shoot at my government’s order. I am not 
afraid of the test.” 

Carnegie asked him to become a member of the Church 
Peace Union board of trustees, a position which he filled 
until his death. The words he then spoke in advocacy of 
peace come back to us now with striking appropriateness: 

Across the fields of politics and of economics one encounters 
those towering terms that lie back of war, which are fear, inse¬ 
curity, suspicion, greed, race, emigration, raw material and 
discrimination. Out of a combination of these, in some in¬ 
stances out of a single one of these, war has sprung forth like 
a lion out of his den. But wars cannot adjust such problems; 
they complicate them. For the adjustment of these problems 
the facts must be carefully gathered and justice must be seri¬ 
ously exercised. 

He carried the message of these words to all America, 
making a tour across the country to denounce war as a 
method for adjusting international disputes. After the 
United States entered the war, on every Sunday until the 
armistice he prayed in his pulpit for all the nations in¬ 
volved in that unprecedented shambles, mentioning each 
nation by name and supplicating God to have mercy upon 
their madness and folly. This shocked not only his mem¬ 
bership but other patriotic citizens who attended his serv¬ 
ices. “ Some,” he wrote, 


Ambassador of Peace 


109 

became indignant at what they regarded as my lack of patriot¬ 
ism. But the chief concern of the larger part was fear that I 
might be sent to one of the government prisons. From a full 
auditorium my congregation dwindled. The impression went 
out that I was pro-German, whereupon my auditorium was 
filled with Germans until they discovered that I was opposed 
to war, and then they left too. 

But this advocate of peace was prepared for discourage¬ 
ment and criticism. When, a few days before Christmas in 
1917, he sent a letter to the daily papers throughout the 
country, proposing a truce on Christmas Day and suggest¬ 
ing adjustment of the dispute by some method other than 
that of the battlefield, editorial denunciations were heaped 
on him and columnists and stout patriots attacked and de¬ 
rided him. But he persisted by night and day, at home and 
abroad, in reciting his convictions about war. He said: 

Written in the conscience of mankind is reverence for per¬ 
sonality. It is not something we are taught, although teaching 
may develop it. It is intuitively a part of us. This something 
in us is necessarily weakened when we kill a human being; par¬ 
ticularly is this true when the killing is done wholesale under 
the protection of the state, as in a case of war. Consequently 
war is a moral question of first consideration and becomes 
associated with murder. 

At no period of the World War was he swept off his feet 
by the widely publicized atrocity tales. Sunday after Sun¬ 
day he stood in his pulpit and preached tolerance and non- 
resistance. While all about him the theme of every con¬ 
versation was enlistment and reinforcement of the military 
regime, he talked peace and a spirit that makes for peace. 
When he was assailed for disloyalty, he maintained that he 
had a higher loyalty to which he must be true. He bravely 
controverted the time-honored conception of loyalty and 
patriotism. 


1 io 


Peter Ainslie 


Notwithstanding the fact that he shared in the ministry 
to soldiers in the camps and made the Christian Temple a 
center for men in uniform to meet Christian people and to 
enjoy the society of good men and women, Ainslie was con¬ 
vinced that the chaplain, as a representative of the churches, 
has no place in the army. If he wears a military uniform 
and receives military pay he is expected to obey the military 
authorities. It becomes his duty to strengthen the morale 
of the soldiers so that they may murder as many of the 
enemy as possible, and to give thanks to God for victory — 
in Ainslie’s own words, “ to uphold in the name of religion 
the lying war propaganda and the beastly murder of the 
battlefield/’ He called this a “ dreadful tie-up of religion 
with iniquity ” and insisted that it ought to be abolished. 

He was utterly opposed to the church’s associating itself 
in any way with war. “ The most amazing fact in history,” 
he wrote, 

is that the church has wholeheartedly supported war through 
sixteen hundred years without a blush of shame; and it looks 
now as though it is going to be more difficult for the church to 
disentangle itself than for the political governments to do so. 
History abounds in paradoxes. Christianity started as a peace 
movement. In the life of its founders are the most powerful 
and fruitful peace principles the world has ever known. Those 
were the days when Christianity was not as yet a doctrine. It 
was a way of living. It was a life. Yet the followers of Jesus, 
after getting a century and a half away from his life in the 
flesh, not only gave their support to war as a method of adjust¬ 
ing disputes, but so wholeheartedly identified themselves with 
it by enrolling in the army and giving God’s blessing upon it 
that, by the year 416, the Roman senate passed a bill making it 
obligatory upon all soldiers to become Christians in order to 
murder human beings legally. 

His keen sensitiveness in this matter made Ainslie a 
dreaded foe to Christian leaders who were forever endeav- 


Ill 


Ambassador of Peace 

oring to make Christianity fit into “ patriotism ” and “ loy¬ 
alty.” Consistency in the attitudes of peace was of the es¬ 
sence of sincerity to him; lack of it was the essence of in¬ 
sincerity. While thousands of his fellow ministers were 
acclaiming the moral value of force and praying that God 
might bless the American or British swords (and afterward 
repented of it in sackcloth and ashes), Ainslie went on 
saying what he had, in substance, been saying for a 
quarter of a century. He thought that the evil of war 
was rooted in the common sins of intolerance and ex¬ 
clusiveness. “ This war,” he wrote, “ is the indirect prod¬ 
uct of sectarian bitterness and religious controversy which 
in politics is called militarism. Consequently the military 
policy, which is now destined to destroy Europe, has its 
roots deep down in the church.” By accepting war as sin 
for himself and his community of Christians, he gave evi¬ 
dence of sincerity and fairness and justice which won him 
the high esteem of the more thoughtful people of his time. 

There was therefore no alibi of “ disillusionment ” that 
could have brought Ainslie to make public confession of a 
changed attitude after the World War. He had no later 
embarrassments to swallow because of superpatriotic ef¬ 
fusions in the heat of battle. Nor did he have any disap¬ 
pointments to confess, since he had never expected war to 
do anything except breed more wars. The last hope to be 
entertained by him was that war could ever “ end war.” 
Nor could he be included in the condemnation now leveled 
against the ministry that it has no evidence of clearer cer¬ 
tainty than industry has; as John Haynes Holmes said of 
him, “ he had a way of coming clean.” His pacifism was 
of no milk-and-water variety. He denounced apologists of 
war to their faces and indicted them for “ treason against 
God.” Yet he never fought with bitterness. That made 
him all the more dreaded as an antagonist. He might pro- 


112 


Peter Ainslie 


voke an opponent into irrational statements, but he never 
forsook the mood and language of love. His consistent 
course gave him a calmness and a sureness that were the 
envy of all who later came to his position through peni¬ 
tence for past utterances. 

His capacity to detach himself from the environing fury 
that sweeps most men with it was illustrated in two pictures 
he chose to hang in his study. They were simple and ele¬ 
mental. One was of a baby building a block tower which 
was toppling. It was entitled, “ The Little Builder.” The 
second was of a baby also, a baby splashing in a bowl. It 
was entitled, “Tempest in a Teapot.” He often referred 
to these pictures when men and nations became discour¬ 
aged or, at the opposite extreme, went wild. They be¬ 
longed to the philosophy which had enabled Emerson to 
write to a peppery minister whom he had heard preach, 
“ Why so hot, little man? ” When his generation lost its 
head in the great war and good men uttered unguarded and 
unworthy statements and crowds were moved to say and 
do cruel and untrue things, Ainslie maintained a poise 
that was not the result of living apart like the gods on 
Olympus, but the result of dwelling above the petty and 
temporary. 

After the war, Ainslie continued his campaign for peace 
in the midst of the aggressive superpatriotism which vic¬ 
tory had inflamed. A wider phase of his ambassadorship 
for peace began when, along with others, he was sent by the 
Church Peace Union to visit the churches of Europe in 
order to create among them a better understanding and to 
build a new state of mind which might prevent recurrence 
of the evil of war. So strong, however, were the habits of 
war and the esteem for military paraphernalia in the minds 
even of church leaders that one member of the deputation 
carried along his wartime uniform with all the decorations 


Ambassador of Peace 113 

he had received from other nations. Each day he put on 
his regalia and swept around the deck of the ship. Ainslie 
could not endure the incongruity of this display of the 
symbols of war by a delegation on its way to reopen the 
paths to peace on a continent still bleeding from its 
wounds. The perennial graciousness which never forsook 
him stood him in good stead now. One day, confronting 
his fellow commissioner, he expressed amazement at the 
numerous and strikingly rare tokens of regard by which the 
warring nations of Europe had expressed their esteem for 

him. Then he added, “ Don’t you think, Brother-, 

that the sea air will tarnish them and that you are risking 
their beauty by exposing them on shipboard? ” It was 
enough. The daily dress parade was finished. 

The five counts Ainslie later drew up against war were as 
follows: 

(1) War is a most horrible method of the murder business. 
(2) War is the most wasteful business in history. (3) War is 
a most senseless business. (4) War is the lowest standard of 
business. (5) War is an outlawed business. 

If Peter Ainslie had lived to see the beginning of the 
struggle which is now threatening to put out the lights in 
Europe, he would have suffered deeply. He would not 
have closed his eyes to the horrible facts, for his pacifism 
was realistic. But he would not have been discouraged. 
His love of peace and his immovable conviction that it 
must ultimately prevail were rooted in his Christianity, 
whose Founder declared that all men are brothers and 
that the way of love alone will lead to happiness in the 
Kingdom of God both on earth and in heaven. 



10 . Crusader for Social Justice 


KIN to Ainslie’s interest in peace and growing 
out of it was his interest in racial and social justice. He was 
not afraid to lay direct hands on the most delicate social 
problem. Once, for example, when a race riot broke out in 
Baltimore, caution would have counseled a course of ex¬ 
treme wariness. In no city had the “ white ” and “ black ” 
tradition been stronger. Colored people had their places 
in public buildings and conveyances. No stranger could 
have touched the problem without awakening blind rage. 
But here was a citizen, well known to all alike. He be¬ 
longed to one of the noblest Virginia families. He was of 
the elect in the estimation of the whites. They respected 
his judgment. Likewise he had the confidence of the col¬ 
ored population. He called a conference of representatives 
of the best and most widely known in both races, and not 
only brought the rioting to an immediate end but laid a 
foundation for better race relations in his city. 

He became the conciliator between black and white. Al¬ 
ways he kept a calm spirit. His often expressed creed was: 
“ I may not be able to make another see my point of view, 
but I can make him respect the difference through my 
attitude of love.” He believed strongly in the capacity of 
humble people to rise in the scale of social and political 
life and maintained that no race could keep another race 
down. He had grown up with Negroes. Some had been 
his playmates as a child, others his protectors as a babe, 
still others had received communion in his church. Peter 

114 


Crusader for Social Justice 115 

Ainslie would not have taken the extreme position of the 
north and given the colored man political control of vital 
public insitutions, but he would have done more: he would 
have loved him and patiently borne with him as he grew 
capable of leadership. He deprecated the haste which 
wrecked the political standing of the colored man during 
the carpetbagger period, but he ardently defended the 
chance of the Negro to win his place in the sun through 
exercise of his powers in positions of trust and responsibil¬ 
ity. A man, whatever his color, was to Ainslie still a man, 
entitled to respect and social acceptance according to his 
inner worth. 

The following incident reveals his attitude. Once, trav¬ 
eling by train through Virginia, he looked up from his 
book and noticed a Negro girl of about twelve or fifteen 
standing in the aisle, though there were some vacant seats. 
“ I had forgotten about the Jim Crow law in Virginia,” he 
said. 

There was no partition in the center of the car, as I have seen 
in other cars — just the customary arrangement that the Ne¬ 
groes were to take the front of the car and the whites the 
back. ... I beckoned the little girl to a seat by me. She ac¬ 
cepted it reluctantly, but was too frightened to be sure as to 
whether it was an order for her to obey or a courtesy for her 
to accept. I had hardly lifted my book to my eyes to continue 
my reading when a tornado of protests came from all parts of 
the white section of the car: “ Call for the conductor! ” “ Stop 
the train! ” “ Put him off! ” “ We’ll teach these damn Yankees 
a few lessons! ” 

I was apparently reading through it all when the Negro por¬ 
ter approached me and inquired if I had asked the girl to take 
a seat by me, to which I said, “ Yes.” He informed me that it 
was against the law of Virginia, at which I expressed some sur¬ 
prise — “ Ah, indeed! ” 

But I continued reading. Then shouts multiplied in num¬ 
ber and force. “ Get the conductor here! ” “ Put him off the 
train! ” 


Peter Ainslie 


i 16 

A big burly fellow, two seats across from me, shouted: “ If 
the conductor don’t put this here damn Yankee off, I am big 
enough to do it. No nigger gal shall sit beside a white man on 
a train that I ride on.” 

By that time the conductor had arrived. . . . He asked me 
if I had asked the Negro girl to take that seat by me. I assured 
him I had. He then reminded me that it was a violation of the 
law of Virginia. I expressed my regret that Virginia had such 
a law and, turning to the girl, I assured her that she would not 
be moved by my request. I shall never forget the big eyes that 
looked at me as if she were wondering what I meant and, at 
the same time, she gave me an expression of pity for fear that 
I might be blamed for what I was doing. 

Up to this time the conductor and I had spoken in modu¬ 
lated voices amid some disturbance around us, protests and 
jeering remarks from the whites. . . . We came to a water tank 
and the train stopped. Then I asked him in a loud voice in 
order that everybody might hear: “ If Robert E. Lee had been 
seated where I am and this little Negro girl had come down the 
aisle looking for a seat, and he had refused this seat to her, 
would Virginia have any respect for his memory? ” The con¬ 
ductor bent down and whispered in my ear: “ No, and I’ll lose 
my job before I’ll put you off this train or make this girl move.” 

In Ainslie’s growing acquaintance with distinguished 
Negro men and women he deplored increasingly the re¬ 
luctance of the majority white element to accord them the 
privileges and advantages to which they were entitled. He 
took every opportunity of meeting and recognizing capable 
colored leaders and counseling with them about the future 
of their race. He stoutly defended the colored race and as 
stoutly condemned the inhuman practice of lynching. On 
a visit to the south he was a luncheon guest in the home 
of an attorney. “ After the meal,” he said, 

my host called my attention to some of his collections from 
Europe. I saw a piece of rope, about a foot long, hanging on 
the wall. I inquired about it and was told that it was a piece 
of a rope with which a Negro had been lynched some years ago 
in that town. 


Crusader for Social Justice 117 

“ You don’t mean to classify a remnant of Negro lynching 
with these works of art? ” I asked. 

“ Well, of course not,” stumblingly replied the host. 

My hostess interrupted: “ I have told Howard a dozen times 
to throw that piece of rope away. I am ashamed of it.” 

“ Well, with two against me, I will yield. Here it goes,” the 
host declared. 

“ Thank you,” I answered. “ I could not feel comfortable as 
your guest so long as you retained in your home a remnant of 
a Negro lynching.” 

This experience, which Ainslie loved to relate, illustrates 
both his sense of social justice and his naive method of get¬ 
ting done the thing which he was after. The social and 
economic barriers which a prosperous white majority had 
built up against the Negro offended his soul. He tilted 
against them whenever opportunity offered. On one oc¬ 
casion, when he visited a southern city for a speaking en¬ 
gagement, he was met at the railroad station and taken to 
the leading hotel. “ After luncheon,” he continued, 

one of the members of the committee and his wife called to 
take me for a ride. They did the usual thing: they took me 
through the parks and the wealthy sections of the city. When 
we started back to the hotel, I asked that they show me also 
the poor section. With surprise they looked at me as though 
they thought I was joking, and drove back to the hotel. I then 
hired a guide to show me where the poor lived. When I had 
seen the wealth and poverty of the city, I was able to have some 
idea of its contribution to civilization, which I gave to the 
audience in my address that evening. 

But the problem of the colored people, in his mind, 
rooted in American life and grew out of a political tangle 
for which the whites bore inescapable responsibility. He 
presented his scheme for solving the problem in a vigorous 
address championing the colored cause: 

Seventy years ago Lincoln wrote his Emancipation Proclama¬ 
tion, but the Negro’s freedom has been badly bungled. It 
would have been far better for him to be educated for the ballot 


118 


Peter Ainslie 


than to be made a political pawn, and then later to be disfran¬ 
chised. In the southern states there are now, according to the 
United States Department of Commerce, nearly two-thirds of 
the Negroes in the United States twenty-one years of age and 
over, or something over four million disfranchised Negroes. 

It is not right, but what can be done? There may be at 
least three answers to this question. The first would lift the 
disfranchisement act, which would mean, in some southern 
states, the majority, if not the entire, officiary passing to the 
Negroes, including United States senators, congressmen, gov¬ 
ernors, legislators and judges. This would not be fair to the 
whites and would be more unfair to the Negroes, who are, of 
course, not prepared for such a radical shift of responsibility. 
The second would reduce southern representation in Congress. 
The third, and I think the best, would give to Negroes repre¬ 
sentation in Congress and in state legislatures according to the 
percentage of their tax payments or, perhaps, of their popula¬ 
tion. For example, if they paid ten per cent of the taxes in a 
state, or had a population of so many thousands, that state 
should give them one representative in Congress and one in 
the state legislature. When they got to the place where they 
paid a fourth of the taxes in that state, they should be given 
a fourth of the representation. The Negro would be a na¬ 
tional congressman and a state legislator-at-large. Two or 
more Negroes would stand for election irrespective of political 
parties. This would eliminate making the Negro a political 
pawn in the south; it would split the southern whites into two 
parties, which can never be done under the present system but 
which ought to be done. It would give to Negroes not only 
a place of dignity in the state, but a voice in state and national 
councils. 

As Ainslie made no distinction between white and Ne¬ 
gro, so he made no distinction between gentile and Jew. 
The Jewish problem was brought home to him in the early 
years of his ministry. Let him tell the story: 

It was a common occurrence for groups of children to meet 
me in the afternoon as I turned the corner in sight of my home. 
Among these were several Jewish children from a Jewish family 
who lived several doors from me. One afternoon I was walking 


Crusader for Social Justice 119 

up the street with two Christian women, when one of these 
little children, this time a Jewish girl, ran to meet me and 
caught hold of my hand in her usual friendly fashion. One of 
the Christian women inquired with contempt: “ What are you 
doing with that little sheeny? ” 

Instantly, as if a brier had been struck across her face, the 
little girl burst into tears and pulled away from me. I excused 
myself from the two Christian women and held on to the little 
Jewish girl as she walked along crying. I went to her home 
and explained to her mother what had happened, and apolo¬ 
gized for the remark; but the ugly thing had been done. Could 
a child forget it? I think she tried to, but we were never as 
good friends thereafter. I called on the Christian woman who 
made the remark and told her the circumstances, expressing my 
regret, but she came back at me with surprise that I was friendly 
with Jews. 

That interest, once awakened, never left him. It was at 
his own request that Rabbi Rosenau of Baltimore was 
asked to participate in his funeral services. Ainslie took 
part in interfaith programs organized to acquaint Jews and 
Christians with the good in the religion of each. But he 
never joined in movements that had as their aim the con¬ 
version of Jews to Christianity. “I do not know,” he 
wrote, 

that I am interested in Jews becoming converts to our present- 
day Christianity, joining the Presbyterians, or Disciples, or 
Episcopalians, or Baptists, or Lutherans, or Catholics, or Meth¬ 
odists, or any other of the two hundred and more varieties of 
Christians. But I am profoundly interested in Jews and Chris¬ 
tians working together until another type of Christianity 
emerges, so neither will absorb the other, but both will con¬ 
tribute such understanding of Jesus as will give him his right¬ 
ful place in the thought of both Jews and gentiles, which he 
has not yet had of either, but which he some day will have of 
both, for the stock of David holds the key for a reconciled 
world. Christianity needs the Jews. Indeed, it will never 
reach its best until it is grafted into the Jewish stock. And the 
Jews no less need Christianity. 


120 


Peter Ainslie 


Ainslie’s efforts in behalf of racial equality were but a 
part of the ministry of social justice he carried on con¬ 
stantly. He was not the man to follow the cheap and easy 
way of professing love for his fellows or criticizing an in¬ 
stitution or a method, and then do nothing about it. 
Whatever person or cause enlisted his sympathy could 
count on his active support. 

Early in his pastorate he established a “ Working Girls’ 
Home ” in Baltimore. It was nonsectarian. The only 
limitations placed upon its membership were those relat¬ 
ing to age and income. It was open only to girls between 
sixteen and thirty-five who were receiving five dollars or 
less a week. This experiment in attempting to lighten the 
burden of girls condemned to work for a pittance led Ains¬ 
lie into some of the most interesting, as well as most acute, 
situations of his ministry. He was so ardent in his zeal for 
the success of this social adventure that he acted as its treas¬ 
urer and his diaries contain pages listing detailed purchases 
and expenditures for its maintenance. More than eight 
hundred girls found a haven of refuge in the Home and 
were able to live respectably at a most moderate cost. 
Through the charitably inclined women whom Ainslie in¬ 
stalled as leaders, he provided for them constant Christian 
oversight and companionship. But in his mind there was 
always a sense of the social injustice in a system that would 
compel a girl to work for five dollars a week when the busi¬ 
ness for which she worked was paying good dividends to its 
stockholders. On at least one occasion he took direct ac¬ 
tion in the matter: 

One of the girls in the club got $3.50 a week. With Ruskin 
as my background, I went to see the president of the corpora¬ 
tion where she was employed, and told him the story. 

“ Well, if you don’t want her to work here,” he replied, “ you 


Crusader for Social Justice 121 

may be able to get her another job; and we can get another girl 
to fill her place at the same price we are paying her.” 

“ Of course you can. Times are hard and there are a great 
many poor people who have to work for whatever they can 
get. But do you think it is fair to take advantage of the poverty 
of the poor in order to make money for the rich? ” 

He arose from his seat, and asked: “ Did you come in here 
to tell me how to run my business? ” 

I answered: “ I do not wish to offend you, nor did I come 
here to tell you how to run your business. You are my brother 
and this girl is my sister. I am assuming that you did not know 
that there was a girl in your establishment who was receiving 
$3.50 a week. I came here to tell you that I know the girl who 
is receiving that amount and I believe your position in your 
city calls for the correction of this great wrong.” 

“ Prices for labor are not so much governed by profits as by 
what we can get labor for. There are hundreds of girls in this 
city who are glad to get $3.50 a week.” 

“ But do you think it is right to make the labor of these 
girls pay your unreasonable dividends and unreasonable sal¬ 
aries? ” 

“ I see nothing wrong in it. If it were not for people like 
yourself making these girls dissatisfied, they would continue to 
work for these wages,” replied the employer. 

To this I remarked with considerable warmth, “ You are 
mistaken. I have never sought to make any girl dissatisfied 
with her wages. This girl does not know that I have come to 
see you. My job is to talk to the people who pay wages, not 
to the people who receive them. It is the dissatisfaction that 
I hear around me that has led me to be the spokesman for 
working girls. The poor are patient and numerous. Some 
day what they cannot get by reason they will get by force! ” 

“ Are you making this as a threat? ” hotly retorted the pro¬ 
prietor. 

“ No; I am talking facts. A corporation that pays unreason¬ 
able salaries to its officials and unreasonable dividends to its 
stockholders and low wages to its employees, laying them off 
without consideration, is practicing such an antisocial pro¬ 
cedure that human reason will some day have its insurrection. 


122 


Peter Ainslie 


and rightly too. I fear that the cost will be much that is val¬ 
uable in our civilization. I am pleading with you to help to 
save a situation in which you are one of the actors.” 

Happily Ainslie was able to record a slight sign of an 
awakening conscience in the corporation official: 

On the following Saturday Ollie Benson was handed her 
pay envelope with an extra dollar and fifty cents. But even 
five dollars! What was that for a rich concern that ought to 
have been paying decent wages? What value was this small 
increase in one girl’s wages in the face of the economic setup 
in America? Who was I — one individual — against this op¬ 
pression of the poor? This president was said to be a Christian. 
Once men were tried for heresy in theology, and sometimes ex¬ 
communicated; the time has now come when men must be 
helped to see the consequences of their antisocial practices, and 
spoken to in clear terms, whether as a result they leave the fel¬ 
lowship of Christians or not. 

Back of all this lay Ainslie’s genuine love for people, 
whether as individuals or in the mass — his Christian rev¬ 
erence for human personality. One of his friends tells how 
he often shared with him a six o’clock New York subway 
jam. At such times, he says, Ainslie would exult over the 
impulse to preach while hanging to a strap, crowded into 
capsule dimensions by the sheer pressure of people. Each 
of the atoms in that black hole of Calcutta had for him a 
peculiar appeal. 

It would be impossible to estimate the influence he 
wielded for social justice. Here too he used direct methods 
and responded to every plea that came his way. But here 
too he kept both forest and trees in sight. He worked at 
the task from both ends, alleviating the lot of the indi¬ 
vidual whenever he could and raising his voice in protest 
against the world’s wilderness of injustice. 


11 . Atnslie and the Disciples 


While Ainslie was an unreconstructed anti- 
denominationlist, he recognized his obligations to the Dis¬ 
ciples’ movement. He never forgot the pit from which his 
people had been digged. While many of his fellow com- 
munionists had reduced the Plea to mean the steps in 
conversion — namely, faith, repentance, confession and 
baptism — he conceived it to be the appeal of Thomas 
Campbell in the “ Declaration and Address ” — the appeal 
for the unity of the church. Attempts to build a great reli¬ 
gious body, to rank high in numbers and to build a wide 
organization found little favor with him. The more his 
people became a “ peculiar ” folk, the more numerous they 
grew and the more they became the custodians of a vast 
philanthropic investment both at home and abroad, the 
more they seemed to him to depart from their original pur¬ 
pose. Every step which involved them in insulation and 
denominational machinery was to him a resignation of the 
trust God had committed to them. 

Although in his earlier ministry he had been, like St. 
Paul, more zealous than his fellow Disciples in making con¬ 
verts and in baptizing by immersion those who previously 
had accepted sprinkling, he did not hesitate later to ac¬ 
knowledge his mistaken zeal as partisan and partial and as 
destructive of the ultimate purpose of his people’s mission. 
It was at this point in his ministry that he first became the 
object of extreme criticism, which followed hard on the 
inordinate adulation he had formerly received from his 

123 


124 


Peter Ainslie 


own people. For so long as this gifted and charming and 
deservedly popular preacher followed in the traditional 
steps of the fathers he was widely acclaimed. Nothing was 
too good for so stout a champion. He was sought out for 
every program and desired in every home. So long as he 
could say “ shibboleth,” his people universally accorded 
him their homage and approval. They gave him the high¬ 
est honor within their power, the presidency of the General 
Convention of the Disciples of Christ. 

It will be remembered that Ainslie’s forebears had taken 
part in the beginning of the Disciples’ movement along 
with Thomas and Alexander Campbell. The latter in¬ 
structed Peter Ainslie II in the principles of the “ Ref¬ 
ormation ” and often heard him preach. The Ainslies were 
always courageous and creative and revealed forward- 
looking qualities. Each in his turn was a leader. Each in 
his generation made a marked contribution to the growth 
and character of this communion. It was but natural to 
expect, therefore, that Peter Ainslie III would have a deep 
interest in the course of Disciple history and would take 
pride in the brotherhood’s growing place among other 
denominations and find joy in its progress. The esteem 
in which he found the Disciples to be regarded was his pe¬ 
culiar satisfaction; any disfavor in which they might any¬ 
where be held was his pain. 

His chief interest was in seeing them devoted to their 
earliest mission: the reunion of the church. When he 
found them chiefly concerned about their own tenets and 
growth and employing the appeal of unity to win denomi¬ 
national converts, he was keenly disappointed; it offended 
both his sense of reverence and his dream of their possibili¬ 
ties. When he found them anywhere descending to the 
position of becoming mere guardians of a noble conception, 


Ainslie and the Disciples 


125 

of the proportions or magnitude of which they seemed to 
have little understanding, it meant acute distress to him. 

This insight formed the theme of his presidential ad¬ 
dress at Topeka in 1910. That address was conceived in 
great affection for his denomination, but it was neverthe¬ 
less one of strong rebuke. It was received by some in hu¬ 
mility, by many as a prophet’s word, but by the more con¬ 
servative element as the words of a deserter. These gave 
voice to their disapproval in unmistakable fashion. As 
usual, when large audiences are deeply moved, reason abdi¬ 
cates and passion sweeps otherwise sane men into un¬ 
guarded utterances. It was so at Topeka. Devout minis¬ 
ters and laymen vied with one another to be heard. Some 
got up on chairs and gesticulated wildly. Others walked 
down the aisle toward the platform denying Ainslie’s ac¬ 
cusation that the Disciples did not cooperate, affirming each 
for himself, “ I do cooperate.” To all such assertions 
Ainslie calmly replied, “ I am glad, brother, that you do.” 

Through the outburst, he stood as chairman on the plat¬ 
form dumfounded by the commotion he had provoked, 
and seemed to hold the gavel impotently in his hand. A 
friend said to him on the way out, “ Ainslie, what were 
you thinking about while you stood there? ” “ I was think¬ 
ing,” he replied, “ are these my brethren? ” 

Nevertheless, as the audience dispersed, some of the dele¬ 
gates began to search their own experiences and many were 
heard to say, “ After all, Ainslie was more than half-right 
in his condemnation of us.” Hence, at the special session 
he called for the consideration of practical steps in line 
with his proposal, a different spirit prevailed. Here were 
the men and women who had long waited for a leader and 
a voice on this issue, and their enthusiasm matched the 
criticism which had made the morning session turbulent. 


126 


Peter Ainslie 


Those not in sympathy with Ainslie’s ideas remained away, 
and an enthusiastic audience of the favorably inclined 
voted unanimously to set up an organization for which 
he had pleaded in his address. It was at first called the 
“ Council on Christian Unity ” but was later changed to 
the “ Association for the Promotion of Christian Unity.” 
A leading Disciple layman, Mr. Robert A. Long of Kansas 
City, Missouri, pledged twenty-five hundred dollars in 
printing services of the Christian Evangelist Publishing 
Company. 

So began the crusade which he carried throughout his 
communion while at the same time holding Christian unity 
conferences throughout the whole church, both at home 
and abroad. Large numbers attended his meetings and 
great enthusiasm followed his earlier meetings. The re¬ 
sponse he received from other communions was highly 
gratifying. The Disciples generally gave both money and 
approval to the movement during its earlier years. It was 
only when Ainslie came to recognize members of other 
churches as Christians in the practice of open membership 
that he began to meet opposition. 

From this time on Ainslie was the center of a long and 
sometimes bitter conflict. Many of the Disciples “ walked 
no more with him.” So strong was the opposition to his 
“ heresies,” as they were called, that some churches of the 
Disciples were closed to him; some even canceled meetings 
that had been announced. An important church which 
thus refused him admission was challenged by one of its 
prominent laymen to “ lock the building and cease calling 
itself a church ” if that continued to be its attitude toward 
“ so noble a soul.” The “ Association for the Promotion 
of Christian Unity ” became an object of acute opposition 
within the organized life of the communion. Some of their 
more vocal leaders assaulted it and Ainslie continually. 


Ainslie and the Disciples 


127 

Ainslie was as always philosophical and sweet-tempered un¬ 
der the attack. As he said on one occasion: 

I understand Brother-is to begin a fight against the 

Association. It makes no difference so far as I am concerned, 
for my personal wish would have been to be free so I could 
work on independent lines. But for the sake of the Disciples 
I hope it is not done, for it would be most difficult to explain. 

It will be remembered that presently Ainslie withdrew 
from the Association. He summed up the reasons for this 
withdrawal: 

I served as chairman of my denominational Christian unity 
board for fifteen years. After such uncertain headway, I did 
not stand for reelection at the General Convention. Perhaps 
I could have won a majority vote; perhaps not. Anyway, I 
had worried the brethren of my denomination too much by 
my constant and unchecked contacts with those of other de¬ 
nominations and they received, in the convention, the an¬ 
nouncement of my retirement with general applause. I am 
nothing, but the cause for which I am contending is vital. I 
do not know that any other denomination would have acted 
differently if their traditional practices had been so persistently 
corrected. All denominations, as organized denominations, 
are more or less backward. We must be patient with each 
other. It is so hard for us Christians to be gentlemen like 
Jesus. 

His own patience must have been taxed severely at times, 
though he never complained of personal insults and slights. 
He particularly regretted the attitude of the Canadian Dis¬ 
ciples when the United Church of Canada was being 
formed. The United Church, he felt, was at least a partial 
realization of the hope for which his people had come into 
being; whether or not the program included everything 
they might have wished, that was a relatively unimportant 
matter as compared with the privilege of fellowship in the 
spirit of Jesus and of the “Declaration and Address ” of 



128 


Peter Ainslie 


which Thomas Campbell was author. No one knew bet¬ 
ter than Ainslie that the Disciples never had been uniform 
in thought or even in practice. Their entire history had 
been one of supreme individualism and in large degree 
every man had done that which was right in his own eyes. 
If, then, the Disciples had been able to hold together as 
one body with such varied and diverse opinions among 
themselves, why, he argued, should they not grant the same 
liberty of opinion to other bodies of Christians? Yet to 
his regret he saw the Disciples holding aloof from this 
embryonic union movement not only in Canada but else¬ 
where. It grieved him especially that they did not share 
the unity movement on the foreign fields, where divisions 
are doubly mischievous and hurtful. 

On the other hand, no one rejoiced more than he to find 
them accepting places of fellowship in the cooperative 
movements of federation, whether local or national. He 
hailed with enthusiasm their growing cooperation with the 
Federal Council of the Churches of Christ in America, from 
the date of its organization. He also followed with deep 
interest the participation of the Disciples in local move¬ 
ments of churches for practical ends. He often said that 
the Disciples’ general attitude toward practical cooperation 
was of such high order that it was in sharp and strange con¬ 
trast with their reluctance to participate in movements 
which actually merged into union organizations. He never 
spared them in public address because of this strange aloof¬ 
ness wherever practicable union was at stake. 

Peter Ainslie never had an easy time with his “ breth¬ 
ren,” as he affectionately called them. That he was an irri¬ 
tant among them no one could doubt who knew him and 
his objectives. Indeed he often said, in his quaint and 
half-humorous fashion, “ I love to give the brethren a 
prod.” If the Disciples continued to manifest so largely 


Ainslie and the Disciples 129 

the spirit of self-satisfaction, he often declared, he despaired 
of their making any large contribution to Christian unity. 
But though he despaired at times of his people he never 
gave up hope, for he felt that a group which had already 
accomplished so much would not rest on its laurels. He 
summed up his convictions in the matter: 

I desired the attitude of my denomination changed toward 
other Christians as I desired the attitude of all Christians to 
be friendly and appreciative of others. I knew my denomina¬ 
tion as thoroughly as any man in it and I knew that, as a de¬ 
nomination, it did not stand for Christian unity except by ab¬ 
sorption, which is the position of most denominations. Of 
course, this is not unity at all; nevertheless, there was a small 
minority with an outlook toward real Christian unity, and 
among the members of my denomination in general there was 
a traditional memory, although not much was said about unity 
in those days. My denomination was genuinely Protestant. 
It had pushed its way beyond Protestant creeds and systems 
of theology and had taken the New Testament as its sole rule 
of faith and practice. Too much cannot be said for this 
achievement, which I believe has merit as a contribution to 
unity. 

The point of greatest irritation between Peter Ainslie 
and his own communion was open membership. This 
question, as he explained, “ was not involved in my policy 
until a year or two before my retirement [from the Asso¬ 
ciation], when I openly advocated it.” The very nature of 
his activities and interests led him into intimate contact 
with Christians outside his denomination. His attitude re¬ 
minds one of Charles Lamb’s reply to the interrogation, 
“ Don’t you hate that man? ” — “ How can I? I know 
him.” Both Ainslie’s acquaintance with other Christians 
and the logic of the Disciples’ plea for the unity of all Chris¬ 
tians brought him to see and to say that there was no rea¬ 
son for making an appeal for Christians to unite if there 


Peter Ainslie 


13 ° 

were not other Christians with whom to unite. But, as he 
wrote, “ the more I go with persons of other denominations, 
the more suspicious becomes my denomination of me. 
This is not peculiar to my denomination. This is a dis¬ 
tinctive peculiarity, more or less, of all denominations — 
jealousy.” 

On June 4, 1924, in a sermon entitled “ A Highway 
Through Protestant Christendom,” he publicly announced 
his stand for open membership. He said: 

There are several hundred parties in the church. Sometimes 
they are called sects or denominations or communions, but 
whatever they may be called each one is a party with its party 
colleges, party journals and party conventions. The Christian 
Temple belongs to the party called Disciples of Christ, whose 
traditional policy has been to receive into membership only 
those Christians who have been baptized by immersion. All 
the other parties, likewise, have their traditions and distinctive 
peculiarities. But are these traditional party practices infal¬ 
lible, and, therefore, unchangeable? If that be true, then the 
Protestant Episcopal Church must forever keep their pulpits 
closed lest they offend their traditions, and, likewise, the South¬ 
ern Baptist churches must continue to practice close commun¬ 
ion lest they offend their past. These have just as good argu¬ 
ments for the closed pulpits and close communion as the 
Disciples have for closed membership. All three practices, 
however, are long out of date, and, therefore, may be abolished. 

No power among Protestant Episcopalians, Southern Bap¬ 
tists or Disciples can suppress this reaching out for a larger, 
mutual fellowship. It is a fundamental principle of spiritual 
religion, whose awakening and development is of God as truly 
as the budding of trees and the growing of flowers are of him. 

There are many barriers to unity, but there are three ritual¬ 
istic barriers to full fellowship in Protestant Christianity. 
These are the closed pulpit, close communion, and closed mem¬ 
bership. Barton W. Stone was the prophet of the open pulpit, 
and, consequently, had to leave the Presbyterian Church of 
Kentucky, where the closed pulpit was practiced a hundred 
years ago. Thomas Campbell was the prophet of open com- 


Ainslie and the Disciples 131 

munion, and, consequently, had to leave the Seceder Presby¬ 
terian Church, which practiced close communion. These two 
movements formed a partial union and became the Disciples 
of Christ. Therefore, historically and morally, the Disciples 
are committed to the removal of the third ritualistic barrier, 
which is closed membership, else the prophetic services of Bar¬ 
ton W. Stone and Thomas Campbell are not only incomplete, 
but discounted by the present-day Disciples. 

If it be said that the practice of open membership among 
the Disciples would cause division, and, therefore, ought not 
to be done, then again Barton W. Stone was wrong when, by 
practicing the open pulpit, he caused division among the Ken¬ 
tucky Presbyterians, and Thomas Campbell was wrong when, 
by practicing open communion, he caused division among the 
Seceder Presbyterians, and so was John Wesley, for he caused 
division among Episcopalians, and so was Martin Luther, for 
he caused division among Roman Catholics. For myself, I do 
not for a moment believe that any one of these men was wrong 
on the general principles for which he contended, but, instead, 
the wrong was on the side of those whose protests to spiritual 
progress necessitated division. I will not believe that the Dis¬ 
ciples, heirs of the trust of Christian unity, with their growing 
freedom and catholicity of spirit, have so far abandoned their 
task as to condemn the action of Stone and Campbell and re¬ 
fuse to carry to completion what these men left us to do, thereby 
being the heralds of a highway through every Protestant com¬ 
munion with the cry for the open pulpit, open communion and 
open membership. If this is not true, then it is true that the 
Disciples, after a hundred years, are, in their attitude toward 
open membership, just where the Seceder Presbyterians were 
a hundred years ago toward open communion! Christians can 
make little progress in unity until we stand in each other’s eyes 
as equally Christian. 

The Disciples are committed to apostolic practices relative 
to the weekly observance of the Lord’s Supper and baptism by 
immersion, and I see no reason why we should not stand ever¬ 
lastingly loyal to these. Open membership need not be any 
more of a compromise with regard to the scriptural form of 
baptism than open communion is with regard to the scriptural 
observance of the Lord’s Supper. 

The Disciples are a free people. No district, state, national 


Peter Ainslie 


132 

or international convention can rule on these matters without 
trespassing on our hard-won liberties. Open membership is 
unquestionably in the realm of Christian liberty. Already the 
Disciples who are exercising this liberty are multiplying. We 
are beginning to discover that neither names nor ordinances 
are the signs of discipleship. By this shall all men know that 
ye are my disciples, says Christ, “ if ye have love one to an¬ 
other.” But a love that bars the door by forms and ceremonies 
is not the love that Christ released for all mankind; neither can 
an unbelieving world see in the barred door any evidence of 
the sign of Christian discipleship. Christian liberty must func¬ 
tion throughout Protestantism until all barriers are removed 
and there is a highway of equality through every Protestant 
communion, based upon faith in Jesus Christ and loyalty to 
him, making for the unity of the Protestant household and its 
spiritual power for the betterment of the world. For myself, 
I do not want to face Christ, either in prayer now, or in eternity 
then, with any less fellowship than that of the whole Church 
of God. 

There were no immediate repercussions. “ I find,” Ains¬ 
lie wrote, “ that my sermon has not created any sensation 
anywhere, which is very gratifying, for it indicates either 
that it is what my brethren generally thought I held, or that 
open membership is becoming a part of our thinking.” 
But he was yet to hear from his people. Opposition 
gathered slowly, and then burst in a storm of recrimi¬ 
nation. The Disciples had no quarrel with the open pul¬ 
pit. Traditionally their ministers had spoken in the pul¬ 
pits of other communions and had welcomed ministers 
from other religious bodies into theirs. Neither did they 
make any protest against open communion. Every Sunday 
throughout their entire history and throughout their fel¬ 
lowship, wherever they existed, they had made it clear that 
everyone who loved the Lord Jesus was welcome to the 
table of the Lord, since it was his table, not theirs. But 
when it came to open membership, the rank and file of 
the Disciples rose in protest. The publication of the “ Pact 


Ainslie and the Disciples 133 

of Reconciliation ” added fuel to the flame. Indeed there 
was a period when, in many sections, condemnation of 
Ainslie was the standard by which a man’s loyalty to the 
communion was measured. So great was the hostility to 
Ainslie that one of the Disciples’ denominational papers 
undertook a campaign to rout him from the Christian Tem¬ 
ple. But Ainslie, as he wrote, “ knew his congregation.” 
The Temple board met during his absence and voted to 
make open membership the accepted policy of the Temple, 
and the attempt against their pastor ended abruptly. 

When the Disciples General Convention met in Okla¬ 
homa City in 1925, Mr. Robert A. Long introduced the 
following resolution: 

In accord with the practice of our people and the teaching 
of the New Testament as understood by us for more than a 
hundred years, we are conducting our work everywhere on the 
principle of receiving into membership of our churches only 
those who are immersed believers. 

This resolution was directed at the officers of the United 
Missionary Society of the Disciples, of which Dr. Fred¬ 
erick W. Burnham was then president. But it affected also 
the churches and ministers within the communion then 
practicing open membership, and here Peter Ainslie was 
among the chief sinners. Although it was an action that 
meant polite dismissal from the fold, this did not provoke 
him to despair. His reply was: “ There are no denomina¬ 
tions without their prophets. The only hope of my de¬ 
nomination is with this prophetic minority. Every year I 
observe it increasing.” 

Throughout these attacks Ainslie kept his sense of per¬ 
spective. “ We are having a lively time down here,” he 
wrote to a friend in 1928, 

over a stir I kicked up last Sunday night on the occasion of 
preaching in Immanuel Protestant Episcopal Church, stating 


Peter Ainslie 


134 

that the Christian Temple was practicing open membership 
and that St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Richmond had de¬ 
cided to receive into its membership persons of other churches 
without the rite of confirmation. There are a lot of preachers 
wanting to keep up the bars, but over against them there are 
other groups wanting to take them down. I am glad to be 
among the latter group. 

There were other elements in the opposition to Ainslie 
among the Disciples. There were not many centers of 
influence within the communion which had not been dis¬ 
pleased by his undenominational attitude. The denomi¬ 
national colleges and papers were particularly offended. 
These, Ainslie felt, made for the perpetuation of sectarian¬ 
ism, and more than any other agencies were preventing 
Christian unity. In his opinion, young men training for 
the ministry should be made familiar with many points of 
view and be taught to think of the various Christian bodies 
as allies and friends rather than as opponents. But such 
an attitude could hardly be inculcated in a denominational 
college. Ainslie had written concerning his own educa¬ 
tion at the College of the Bible: “ There was no course in 
the doctrines of my denomination taught in the college 
where I attended, but there was a denominational atmos¬ 
phere in it. Unconsciously I yielded little by little until 
in my third year I was a thorough denominationalist. I 
did not recover for the next fifteen or twenty years.” “ A 
young man from any Christian family in America,” he 
added, “ might enter any one of the hundreds of denomi¬ 
national colleges and come out a papist or a Baptist — con¬ 
tingent on the atmosphere to which he submitted himself.” 

In the same fashion, Ainslie contended, denominational 
papers worked against Christian unity. They were depend¬ 
ent on subscriptions from denominationalists and the edi¬ 
tors determined their policies with a bias. Many of them 


Ainslie and the Disciples 


135 

felt that any proposal which hinted at the equality of all 
Christians by so much took away from denominational zeal 
and lessened the support given denominational papers. 
The object of the denominational paper, Ainslie declared, 
is “ largely to keep up denominational fences,” looking out 
for the denominational traditions and resenting attacks 
from dissenting denominations. 

Such plain speaking concerning institutions as sacred 
as one’s college and one’s family religious paper must in¬ 
evitably offend. And it did. Nothing but the winsome 
personality and unquestioned sincerity of the man him¬ 
self saved him from being disavowed by a large part of 
his communion, even though the recognized freedom of 
belief among the Disciples could never have led to a heresy 
trial. “ I am as loosely tied to my denomination,” he 
affirmed, 

as it is possible to be, but as strongly bound to Jesus as I know 
how and, therefore, bound to every follower of Jesus as I know 
how, irrespective of class or race or creed. Some day the Spirit 
of Jesus will find its outlet in the world through a real brother¬ 
hood among his followers. I can help a little toward it, as 
can every one of his disciples, by being unafraid to make ex¬ 
periments in love of the brethren and I propose to work at it 
as long as I live. 

When he was most opposed he said, “ I intend to remain 
a Disciple as long as I live.” He was offered the presidency 
of the Federal Council of Churches, but refused it because 
he felt he could not have the support of his own commun¬ 
ion. Dr. William H. Roberts, then stated clerk of the 
Presbyterian Church in the U. S. A., proposed to elect him 
a Presbyterian but he said he would not desert his people. 

He kept his confidence in his denomination and still 
bore his witness. “ They are mine and I love them, but 
how they do bungle things up,” he once wrote. He re- 


Peter Ainslie 


136 

jected the taunt that he loved to pose as a martyr: “ I have 
hosts of friends among other communions, so that martyr¬ 
dom does not appear anywhere in sight. The Disciples 
as an organized body cannot touch me.” 

When he gave his Yale addresses on “ The Message of 
the Disciples of Christ for Union of the Church ” he did 
not claim to be speaking on behalf of his communion or 
even as an interpreter of their doctrines. “If it be asked 
whether the interpretation I am now giving is universally 
believed and practiced by more than a million members I 
do not hesitate to say that I regret my answer has to be in 
the negative,” he frankly declared. He also stated on that 
occasion that the “ tendency to legalism has often stolen the 
spirit of catholicity from the message of the Disciples and 
made it ungenerous.” 

Ainslie had his hour of embarrassment for the Disciples 
when the World Conference on Faith and Order met at 
Lausanne in 1927. The annual convention of the Dis¬ 
ciples had appointed its quota of delegates to represent 
them, but left Ainslie out! He was not to be so easily dis¬ 
missed, however, for he was a member of the Continuation 
Committee and private subscriptions from friends enabled 
him to attend. It was the judgment of the Disciples’ official 
delegates that they should acquaint the conference with 
the movement and mission of their denomination. To 
this end they had reprinted copies of Thomas Campbell’s 
“ Declaration and Address ” and carried them to Lausanne 
with the expectation of distributing them. In effect these 
amounted to propaganda material. Ainslie, having at¬ 
tended previous conferences on Faith and Order, knew 
that there was a tacit understanding that no single group 
should seek to indoctrinate other groups or in any way 
attempt to convert them to other positions. It was against 
his protest that the literature was taken to Lausanne. He 


Ainslie and the Disciples 


137 

apologized to Bishop Brent, the general chairman, on be¬ 
half of his people, for such possible lowering of the lofty 
plane on which the conferences had been conducted 
hitherto, and offered to resign his place on the Continua¬ 
tion Committee and give the delegation from the Disciples 
the total representation in order to forestall the complaint 
that his communion had no official recognition. But bet¬ 
ter judgment prevailed and the literature was not distrib¬ 
uted. Nor would Bishop Brent allow Ainslie to resign. 
One can but smile at Ainslie’s graphic, if inelegant, phrase: 
“ The Disciples have the cramps, but they will get over 
them after a while.” 

It may be that the group which resented Ainslie’s leader¬ 
ship among the Disciples was more contentious than nu¬ 
merous and it is also possible that Ainslie was more dis¬ 
turbed by it than he should have been. It is true also 
that the majority of cooperating Disciples were in hearty 
accord with the spirit he revealed and the direction he 
was taking. At any rate, the Disciples could not perma¬ 
nently dissociate themselves from one who so thoroughly 
incarnated their history and traditions and convictions. 

Peter Ainslie’s passing was followed by a great change in 
the mood of the Disciples. It is the familiar story of build¬ 
ing tombs to slain prophets. World-wide economic depres¬ 
sion at the time of his death also helped to wash out the 
religious pride and denominational bigotry of which he 
had complained. All this combined to work appeasement 
in the hostile mood which long had assailed his liberal po¬ 
sition. Many who during his lifetime had joined in criti¬ 
cism of his too generous overtures to other communions, 
joined after his death in praising one whom they were now 
proud to acclaim as an honored Disciple interpreter. As 
in all spiritual contributions, he could exalt his own only 
by dying. The Disciples will not be the same again. Their 


138 Peter Ainslie 

eyes have been taken off themselves and put upon the whole 
Church of Christ. 

There are other Disciples among his contemporaries who 
rendered incalculable service to their communion in other 
fields of thought and effort, but none would deny to Ains¬ 
lie the meed of honor due him. He changed the mind of 
his people toward other communions more completely 
than any other man in his generation. In a most real 
fashion “ he turned the heart of the fathers to the chil¬ 
dren. ” He was to his fellowship Thomas Campbell risen 
from the dead. 

The first affirmation of the Disciples was that they con¬ 
stituted a movement, not another denomination; that they 
had no intention or desire to add to the already too numer¬ 
ous divisions in the Church of Christ. Later in their his¬ 
tory, when they yielded to the allurement of prestige and 
with satisfaction published widely the statement that they 
were the only communion having its origin wholly on 
American soil and among American democratic traditions, 
they needed another voice in the wilderness to call them 
back to their earliest appeal. It was Peter Ainslie who, 
more than any other person, brought them back to their 
original message: “ The Church of Christ is and ought to 
be essentially, intentionally, and constitutionally one.” 

The most important contribution, then, of Ainslie to 
the Disciples was that of changing their emphasis in his 
generation from that of a mechanism to a mission. His 
second important contribution was that he won for them 
wider recognition of their place and presence in the reli¬ 
gious world. He became their first recognized plenipoten¬ 
tiary to Christian unity conferences. Nor did he always be¬ 
come so by appointment from his own people. His innate 
interest in the whole church and his initiative in inaugu¬ 
rating world conferences made him a logical represent- 


Ainslie and the Disciples 


139 

ative. He won a large measure of his place of recog¬ 
nized leadership in wider circles, not by the prestige of his 
background nor through the intercession of the denomina¬ 
tion from which he came, but by his passionate determina¬ 
tion to seek contacts for the “ one body ” of the “ One 
Lord.” He carried his own credentials in his inclusive 
soul, and these won him recognition among all com¬ 
munions and throughout all lands. He was known and 
cordially received in the inner circles of the Church of Eng¬ 
land and by the Lutheran leaders of Sweden and of Ger¬ 
many. Most naturally he was known to them as a Disciple. 
Through that contact the Disciples’ communion came to 
be known to the whole religious world as never before. 

Ainslie’s feeling about the Disciples was twofold: (1) 
They were his spiritual forebears and consequently he had 
a peculiar affection for them; he took great joy in the good 
they did and in the reflection of the measure of the Spirit 
of Jesus they reproduced. (2) His letters reveal the sor¬ 
row with which he lamented their shortcomings and feared 
that they had missed their chance. Like a member of a 
well knit family, he felt he had a right to criticize the 
faults of his own people in the hope of correcting them. 
He cherished the hope that his people might fulfill the 
dream of the early fathers of the movement in pioneering 
the way to a united church. 


12. His Evolving Mind 


There are plants that draw their sustenance 
from the earth, others that draw it from the air, some from 
the water. There are people who get their intellectual 
stimulation chiefly from books, others from experience, 
while some grow chiefly by meditation and reflection. 
Peter Ainslie drew his mental nourishment equally from 
many sources. On the one hand he was an omnivorous 
reader. He once said: “ I have never hesitated to read 
anything I thought would help me in my understanding 
of God and of my fellow men. I have tried to get all angles 
from which men view truth.” 

That was true from the first. For instance, on entering 
his ministry, Ainslie wrote to a number of the leading 
churchmen of the time for a list of the books they con¬ 
sidered most vital to them. He noted in his diary that 
“ to know what books a man has read and which have 
helped him most is to know what has made him what he is,” 
but added wisely, “ The only learning is to know the will 
of God and do it.” On receiving the lists of books he pro¬ 
ceeded to buy as many as he could afford, without regard 
to the denominational source. 

Ainslie’s library was evidence of a wide range of literary 
and religious interests. His books were not mere orna¬ 
mentation. He marked them vigorously, revealing a 
thoughtful reading. He left a record of his reaction to the 
subject matter of his reading in no uncertain fashion. 
Even in his devotions, his pencil was always ready to de- 

140 


His Evolving Mind 


141 

scend with emphasis upon any outburst of imprecatory 
expression with which he disagreed. He wrestled with 
strong men’s ideas and grew strong thereby. 

But he also kept a finger on the pulse of his own passing 
experiences. With impartial care he recorded his failures 
and successes. Trial and error were to him the law of 
growth. The book of life was his absorbing study. Noth¬ 
ing that went into it was unimportant. He was forever 
writing diaries, many of which were never completed. But 
a habit of noting the little incidents of each day was strong 
upon him. The diaries reveal what seems the strange in¬ 
congruity of a mind now absorbed in mystic meditation on 
the deep things of God, now reflecting on infinitesimal 
items of expense in connection with a holiday trip. Yet 
this capacity for giving attention alike to great things and 
to apparently trivial ones was a striking characteristic of 
his nature. He might be preaching on the peace of God, 
but he did not miss the change of expression in an auditor’s 
face. To him cause and effect were not merely metaphysi¬ 
cal laws to be pondered upon in the abstract; they were 
processes going on in each least reaction of human rela¬ 
tions. This book of knowledge he never closed. 

Here is a concrete illustration of this attitude and ca¬ 
pacity of his. As has already been mentioned, Peter Ainslie 
was for many years a premillenarian. In his earlier min¬ 
istry he rarely left this subject out of any series of sermons. 
He was accustomed to preach on it in his own church twice 
each year, launching enthusiastically into an extended ar¬ 
gument for a catastrophic ending of the world and a spec¬ 
tacular establishment of the Kingdom of God. Then 
gradually the idea was eclipsed in his mind. Years passed 
during which little or nothing was heard from him of this 
gospel of the second coming. 

One day when motoring in Baltimore he was asked by a 


142 


Peter Ainslie 


friend what had happened to his much beloved theme, 
whether he still preached it. As if he could not deliver 
himself on that subject and drive at the same time, Ainslie 
drew up to the curbing and turned off the ignition. Be¬ 
fore he could proceed, his friend explained that his inter¬ 
est was in the process of his mind: Did he believe that 
doctrine still or did he no longer believe it? If he did 
not, how had he come to his disbelief? Did he read him¬ 
self out of it or did he reason himself out of it? Ainslie’s 
answer was typical and revelatory of his whole mental 
make-up. He said: “ I do not know that I have ever wholly 
discarded the idea of the second coming of our Lord. But, 
as I come to think of it, I do remember that I have not 
preached on it as I used to do. Whatever change of mind 
I have had on that subject has not been caused by my 
reading. Nor do I recall having reasoned myself out of 
it. I suppose it came about like this: I came to have many 
invitations to speak on the subject from groups who had 
heard of my devotion to this theme. Figuratively speak¬ 
ing, when I arrived at the place and looked around at the 
people who were drawn together through devotion to this 
conception I said to myself, ‘ If believing this idea makes 
me look like that, it must not be so.’ ” 

Ainslie early fell under the spell of Henry Drummond, 
who first opened his mind to the law of evolution at work 
in the universe; this, joined to the writings of Alexander 
Campbell and to the spirit of John Robinson, who said, 
“ New truth is yet to be revealed from God’s Word,” eman¬ 
cipated his mind. Often as he was destined thereafter to 
fall into the morass of literalism, he now had the key and 
could unlock the doors of larger kingdoms of knowledge 
as he came to them. 

The early records of Ainslie’s mind and attitude seem 
forbidding and hopeless as advance indications that their 


His Evolving Mind 


143 

holder was later to become so potent an instrument of the 
conception of a universal society or of the universal church. 
Many of his private and published writings of those earlier 
years seem wrapped in impenetrable husks of isolation. 
His sermons had to do with distinctive tenets of the Dis¬ 
ciples or dwelt upon the need of “ conversion ” on the part 
of all other Christians, and in general stressed the necessity 
of building future Christianity on the concepts Alexander 
Campbell had formulated in 1830. Darker still, the 
shadow of premillennialism seemed to hold his mind locked 
in Stygian gloom. Even as late as his fortieth year he con¬ 
sidered it his appointed mission to declare the end of 
the world and the attending cataclysm. It is therefore all 
the more amazing that at middle life he should have got the 
key to fuller truth together with the courage to use it. Like 
all men of strength he had many conflicting elements in 
his nature. One could never say of him that he was this 
or that, for usually he was both. 

But Ainslie was forever ready to evaluate experience and 
extract the truth from error. Where most men prema¬ 
turely close their minds or become victims of hardened 
mental arteries, he became more daring as he grew older. 
His earlier conservatism was an inheritance, an attitude 
absorbed from his environment, while his later liberalism 
was the result of observation and experience. Reversing 
the usual tendency, he was a conservative in his earlier 
years and a liberal, if not a radical, in his later. As a 
young minister he was an ardent contender for the beliefs 
of the Disciples and loved to make converts from the 
“ sects as a mature man he traveled thousands of miles 
to hold conferences on Christian unity, to preach the gospel 
of recognition of one another’s Christianity and to urge the 
need of reconciliation. As a young preacher he laid great 
emphasis on peculiar doctrines; as a man of ripe experience 


Peter Ainslie 


144 

he repudiated all peculiarities as perversions of the expres¬ 
sion of divine grace. As a young southern gentleman he 
held strongly to the social prerogatives of culture and race 
and possession; as a mature student of human relation¬ 
ships he became a flaming advocate of the social gospel and 
of ideals which recognized neither race nor class. 

This evolution of mind in Ainslie was the most surpris¬ 
ing development of his many-sided nature. In his ideas 
he did not belong to his generation; he was always in ad¬ 
vance of it, anticipating the future with singular clarity. 
And he had courage to match his insights. It took a brave 
man to champion ideas that would make obsolete the cher¬ 
ished labor and service of the entire lifetime of his con¬ 
temporaries. For example, as noted elsewhere, he came 
to a strong conviction that denominational colleges and 
denominational journals were a hindrance to Christian 
unity and were the refuge of tradition and sectarianism. 
Yet what institutions have so engrossed the labor and won 
the gifts of so many devout Christians as these? Those who 
gave to them believed they were doing God service in for¬ 
tifying these agencies for generations to come. It was like 
flying in the face of providence to challenge such apparent 
loyalty. But he did challenge it, unmistakably, and as so 
often in his life his friends began to fall away and “ walked 
no more with him.” This opposition naturally wounded 
him; he was conscious of having hurt devoted men and 
women by contending against denominational “ holy 
things.” But he knew that these “ holy things ” were 
stumbling-blocks to the unity of the church, and felt bound 
to cast away these historic treasures and the esteem of many 
good men for the sake of a cause that was still more pre¬ 
cious. 

By that exercise of courage in following his vision, his 
mind continuously unfolded. In one of those rare mo- 


His Evolving Mind 


145 

merits when he opened the window on his early life he 
closed it by saying, “ Out of my home training (which was 
a university within itself) I learned to be open-minded.” 
It was this habit of keeping an open mind which continu¬ 
ally let in new truth and made him the despair of consist¬ 
ent people, who expected to find him always holding to 
the views of former years. Following the principle of 
truth at any price led him to take positions at painful var¬ 
iance with those of former friends. Of one trying in¬ 
stance he said: “ I was searching for truth and intended to 
find it, if in so doing it separated me from all theological 
ideas I had ever held.” 

His method of finding truth, or reaching conclusions, 
was unique — indeed would have been fatal for almost 
any other man. Here too, as William Adams Brown once 
trenchantly said of him, “ he had a preference for direct 
methods.” For example, he had what is properly called 
a critical mind with respect to the Bible. One is reminded 
of Benjamin Franklin who, though calling himself “ a sea¬ 
soned old sinner,” contracted the Psalms by leaving out 
all the repetitions (of which he said, “ I found more than 
I could have imagined! ”), and all imprecations which ap¬ 
peared “ not to suit well the Christian doctrine of forgive¬ 
ness of injuries and doing good to enemies.” This latter 
mood fitted Peter Ainslie’s mind precisely. For he would 
read with personal appropriation all the penitential Psalms, 
but would strike out a revengeful paragraph as unchristian. 

It was his custom, in his morning devotions, to read some 
portion of the Psalms in connection with whatever other 
Scripture he read. But before he began reading, or even 
before he selected the passage, he got out his pencil and 
sharpened it. He knew he would find imprecatory Psalms 
that would do despite to the gentleness of his own nature 
and much more to the nature of Christ. It did not offend 


Peter Ainslie 


146 

him that those who lived remote from the influence of 
Jesus should have had vengeance and hatred in their hearts. 
He accepted whatever good they expressed, but he rejected 
their barbarity. “ Happy shall be he that taketh and dash- 
eth thy little ones against a rock,” some psalmist had writ¬ 
ten. Down would come Peter Ainslie’s poised pencil, strik¬ 
ing out the passage with criss-cross emphasis. Or perhaps 
another psalmist, filled with rage against his enemies, had 
cried out to Jehovah, “ Let them be blotted out of the book 
of life and not be written with the righteous,” “ Let his 
children be fatherless, and his wife a widow, let his children 
be vagabonds and beg, let there be none to extend kindness 
unto him, neither let there be any to have pity on his father¬ 
less children.” Once more the pencil would come down as 
a perched eagle flings itself upon its prey, utterly obliterat¬ 
ing that section from any future obtrusion upon his devo¬ 
tions. Thus Ainslie used the reason with which God had 
endowed him. He refused to be a blind disciple of “ holy ” 
books and “ holy ” traditions. What no longer functioned 
serviceably became obsolete to him. What violated the 
mind of Jesus was anathema to him. He kept his own scrap- 
heap and added to it daily, however shocking it seemed to 
the unthinkingly devout that he should so disregard the 
“ precious ” inheritances of religious custom. 

So did he grow. Consistency, as such, for him held no 
appeal, nor did he hesitate to go contrary to the views and 
postulates of his yesterdays. The criterion of his course at 
any given moment was its likeness to the mind of Christ as 
he conceived it. Hence he rarely apologized for his past 
conceptions. These had been arrived at in the light which 
he then had, and if now he saw them as partial or even false, 
he found no occasion to apologize, since all one can do is 
live according to the best light he now has, clearly perceiv¬ 
ing that present wisdom has emerged out of previous dark- 


His Evolving Mind 


147 

ness. He never fought back at his former views, any more 
than a man fights the molds in which his childhood impres¬ 
sions were cast. He regarded all outmoded conceptions as 
but stepping stones by which he had come to where he now 
stood. Tomorrow even this might pass as truer concepts 
appeared. He adopted the law of growth which Jesus an¬ 
nounced and confessed, and by which he lived each day: 
“ First the blade, then the ear, after that the full corn in 
the ear.’' If he became the unsolved problem, or indeed 
the crown of sorrows, to those who never doubted his sin¬ 
cerity or goodness but could not understand his seeming 
inconsistency, it was because they failed to see his real con¬ 
stancy in the midst of his changing attitudes. He was like 
Ursa Major, which, while forever shifting in its relation to 
all the other stars and constellations, is forever fixed in its 
relation to the polestar. 

Some have contended that Peter Ainslie was a lonely man 
because of his theological opinions, which were regarded 
as heretical by his conservative contemporaries. He was 
lonely in the sense, and to the degree, that every growing 
and greater spirit is so. But to say that he was in the slight¬ 
est degree a sad man is to misinterpret the facts. Like all 
similar men of large conceptions, he lived much among 
people without being a part of them. He could listen with 
seeming absorption to long but unimportant conversations, 
yet remain spiritually detached from their trivialities. 
Otherwise a nature so sensitive as his would have been 
crushed by the multitude of eager people who felt they had 
found in him a comprehending and sympathetic friend. 
The necessity for self-preservation erected in him a barrier 
against petty things, which some mistook for loneliness. 

Again, there are many comfortable, conservative folk 
nestling snugly within traditional conceptions who never 
could conceive that a man who had escaped from that 


Peter Ainslie 


148 

refuge was anything but lonely. So, hearing and reading 
unfamiliar ideas from Peter Ainslie’s lips and pen, they 
concluded that he must be a solitary soul. But on the con¬ 
trary, he lived consciously among a host of congenial spirits 
who ministered to his mind and were always accessible. All 
solicitude for his loneliness was highly unnecessary, patheti¬ 
cally amusing. He had meat to eat of which they knew 
not! He found understanding friends beyond his own 
communion, beyond Protestantism, beyond Christianity 
even. He sought the comradeship of open minds and of 
an inclusive spirit wherever they existed. The only loneli¬ 
ness Peter Ainslie felt arose from the attitude of others to¬ 
ward him, not through his withdrawal from them. 

In his personal manners and habits Ainslie was in many 
respects an unpredictable quantity even to his close asso¬ 
ciates. For example, he was, on occasion, quite formal be¬ 
yond the habits of his fellow ministers. He would wear a 
robe and make much of academic atmosphere. What with 
cap and gown and procession in his morning service, an in¬ 
formal business suit at the evening service, and a give-and- 
take informality with his audience, the striking contrasts in 
his nature were peculiarly revealed. He could be all things 
to all men to a most extraordinary degree. Services of 
strict conformity alternated with services which he led with 
evangelistic freedom, selecting his hymns and talking to his 
audience much with the informality of a Salvation Army 
leader. Thus he made the most ill clad man feel at home 
in his fellowship. 

During his earlier life Ainslie was the soul of punctilious¬ 
ness in the pulpit. Wearing a double-breasted Prince 
Albert coat, with a pince-nez dangling from a long black 
cord, he looked a mid-Victorian clergyman. Apparel, 
voice, manner and posture belonged to the most formal 
school of early nineteenth century pulpit manners. In 


His Evolving Mind 


149 

later years he became, for the most part, quite informal in 
his public appearance. Dressed in a business suit, he felt 
and acted the part of a democrat in the evening services at 
which he officiated. 

This contrast appeared also in the perpetual conflict be¬ 
tween his inheritance of aristocratic tradition and outlook 
and his essentially democratic nature. Ainslie was always a 
typical Virginian. Fully six feet tall, with shoulders erect, 
walking with gallant step, carrying a cane, he would have 
graced the most fashionable occasion of colonial days. He 
loved Atlantic City, enjoyed good hotels, loved to travel 
in dignity and style. What he had he wanted to be of the 
best. When he went to the conference at Geneva, Switzer¬ 
land, he took along a full-dress suit in case it should be 
needed! 

Over against this instinctive aristocracy in him was a 
disciplined democracy. This was the work Christ had 
done upon an otherwise proud spirit. Like St. Paul, he had 
to fight an inner battle against pride of birth. But his 
humility of spirit led him into association with people of 
all classes and conditions and conquered his pride. “ I 
will allow no man by word or conduct toward me to take 
from me my sense of brotherhood with every man and 
woman and child in the world,” he once said. No man 
could share a humble environment with greater ease when 
circumstances required it. Ainslie could light up the most 
modest cottage with a grace of happy conversation that 
made his host and hostess swell with pardonable pride. 

Again one is struck by the contrast between his mod¬ 
esty and his daring. In social relations, Ainslie was self- 
effacing. “ In honor preferring one another ” expressed 
his demeanor in all his social contacts. He put forward 
other men for important situations when he himself could 
have presented the cause better. He praised the efforts of 


150 


Peter Ainslie 


less gifted men in the sincere language of self-forgetfulness. 
He delighted in the advocacy of good causes by men less 
capable than he, bestowing on them unfeigned praise and 
generous approbation. He seemed devoid of jealousy. 
When his denomination became discontented over the de¬ 
gree of tolerance he expressed in his Christian unity con¬ 
ferences, which were being held under the auspices of the 
very agency he had inaugurated, and voted to supplant 
him by other leadership, he carried away no least sense of 
ill feeling or wounded pride. He would sit unwearied 
through monotonous sessions of religious conventions in 
which he had neither part nor recognition, pouring out 
commendation upon those who spoke ever so haltingly in 
favor of causes he longed to see promoted. He found joy in 
the furtherance of good will in the world by whomsoever 
advocated. He buried his own self-esteem in the greater 
issue of human reconciliation. He was never a participant 
in physical sports, but he had learned the best lesson these 
have to teach: that it is not the glory of the individual, but 
that of the team, which is all-important. He could efface 
himself if only the ends for which he lived were being 
championed. He could withdraw himself from public at¬ 
tention with consummate grace and with utter and uncon¬ 
scious modesty. 

On the other hand, he could on occasion be a most suc¬ 
cessful self-advertiser. He understood that great causes 
are usually embodied in strong personalities. Like An¬ 
thony Comstock, who took for his motto, “ Where there is 
no man be thou the man,” Ainslie was not unwilling to be 
that man through whom attention might be drawn to im¬ 
portant issues. Sometimes it was with studied design that 
he did and said things which seemed rash, if not shocking, 
to conservative people. After the fashion of a Jeremiah, 
digging under the walls of Jerusalem like a wild animal to 


His Evolving Mind 


151 

call attention to the impending calamity of his beloved city, 
so the normally staid and precise Ainslie could become a 
man beside himself for the sake of some issue which seemed 
to him of utmost importance. He knew how to dramatize 
a cause at the psychological moment. Illustrations are 
abundant — for instance, the occasion when, after many 
days of talk at Lausanne, he challenged the delegates to 
demonstrate their unity by celebrating the Lord’s Supper 
together. The fact that they were not willing to do it 
dramatized the hesitant mood of the church at a moment 
when it was highly important that the hesitancy should be 
recognized. This same psychological aptitude led him to 
choose what he considered the most pertinent moment to 
make a public attack on the chaplaincy in the army. 

For all these striking and unusual utterances and actions, 
Ainslie was severely criticized by many. His method of 
stabbing the public wide awake was regarded as “ spec¬ 
tacular ” by some who saw only this trait in his nature. For 
pious and zealous churchmen it was shocking to pick up a 
book by a Christian minister entitled The Scandal of Chris¬ 
tianity. Yet that was his way of directing attention to the 
sore spots of organized religion. 

The same contrast was noticeable in the extremes of 
courtesy and of conviction that met in him. On one side 
no man could exceed him in graciousness. He could sit 
all day and listen to the most inane views of sincerely mis¬ 
taken souls who invariably felt that for the first time in 
their lives they were getting a fair hearing and were making 
a most welcome convert. Little did they suspect from his 
outward appearance that for all their persuasive arguments 
nothing within him had changed. Throughout his life 
there was little change effected in his fundamental convic¬ 
tions by argument. He was sure of his ground in basic 
matters. His changes of view came chiefly by experience. 


Peter Ainslie 


152 

Ainslie was capable equally of inducing a mood of con¬ 
ciliation and of provoking extreme irritation. He was an 
unwearied moderator between divergent points of view. 
He never seemed so calm as when others were most fanati¬ 
cal. Like one detached from, or lifted above, the low level 
of partisan debate, he looked down upon the small per¬ 
turbations of ardent propagandists with timeless patience 
and impartial fairness. As a presiding officer, he was at 
once the wonder and the despair of others. His deliberate 
willingness to hear a man through to the last word of some 
petty statement seemed to busy men a loss of precious time 
belonging to bigger issues. But to Peter Ainslie there was 
nothing bigger than generosity toward the individual who 
happened for the moment to claim his attention. It was 
this quality of patient listening which made him an accept¬ 
able mediator in acute situations. 

Notwithstanding all this, there were times when Ainslie 
did stir up extreme irritation. Once he got a conviction 
that a thing should be done, either it had to be done at once 
or his opponents had to exercise a prolonged defense against 
its perpetual resurgence. There was no waving him off 
with placatory words of kindly commendation. 

For Peter Ainslie was an intrepid fighter when he was 
convinced of the justice of his cause. Few men were as 
tender as he in their human relationships. It would not 
be irreverent to apply to him the words of the prophet — 
“ a bruised reed he would not break.” Children loved 
him, even clung to him. The brokenhearted and the un¬ 
fortunate were drawn to him as to an understanding friend 
who would patiently bear with them. He was like a mother 
to those who had missed the way. Some measure of this 
gentleness he carried over into the public arena, for he 
never fought against men, but only against ideas and in¬ 
stitutions that he was convinced were wrong. The basis 


His Evolving Mind 


153 

of his attack was always ethical. While he held firmly to 
the arguments of the case, yet he knew how to strike out 
at opposite points of view with almost reckless thrusts. 

Ainslie was invited by the federation of churches in 
Washington, D. C., to deliver the Holy Week sermons at 
the First Congregational Church in that city during the 
Lenten season in 1925. He began by preaching a sermon 
on this subject: “ Has Christianity Accepted Christ? ” 
There were many chaplains present, as there were officers 
of the United States army, including a general. 

For days he had been brooding on what he regarded as 
the inconsistency of a minister of the gospel of the Galilean, 
becoming a paid officer of the army — an institution com¬ 
mitted to the methods and morale of war. His environment 
was quite enough to have caused him to soft-pedal any 
strong language he might have thought suitable or neces¬ 
sary to point out the inconsistency of such a dual position. 
Rather it inflamed him all the more. 

He said of the sermon: “ I necessarily touched on the sup¬ 
port which the church had given to war. I said: ‘ Churches 
ought to recall their chaplains, for with the outlawry of 
war, there is no more place for chaplains in the army than 
there is in a speakeasy.’ ” 

He had long been an opponent of the idea that the 
church become an ally of the war system. For a minister 
to go with the authority of the church into the panoply and 
pay of the army was anathema to him. If a minister wanted 
to go at his own expense or at the expense of the church as 
a ministering servant of the army, and so remain a free 
man to condemn war and to refuse to be a supporter of its 
point of view, that was commendable. But for such a man 
to wear the military uniform and to take orders from colo¬ 
nels and majors, rather than from his own conscience be¬ 
fore his Lord, was another thing. In such an hour the 


Peter Ainslie 


154 

fighter flashed in his words, “ There is no more reason for 
a chaplain in an army than there is in a speakeasy.” The 
place and statement became an occasion of irritation on 
the one side and of stout defense on the other. Whether 
one justifies his words or not, there can be no doubt about 
the bravery it revealed to utter them. 

That sermon was telegraphed to the daily papers all over 
the country and cabled across the ocean. Many individuals, 
including soldiers and even ex-chaplains, endorsed what he 
had said. The New York Herald Tribune, however, as¬ 
serted that the statement was “ blatantly outrageous ” and 
called it preposterous and insulting, while the Chicago 
Tribune said: “ The author of such a statement is unfit 
for the pulpit, lacking either mental or moral discrimina¬ 
tion.” 

Whether posterity will regard Peter Ainslie as wise and 
prudent for what he said on that occasion or will reckon 
him an irresponsible mountebank is not the issue here. 
What the episode does illustrate is a dauntless courage that 
was unafraid to say what he felt, whatever his audience 
might think about him. For Peter Ainslie’s courage was 
rooted in his selflessness, and that in turn was rooted in his 
Christian humility, which asked only to serve his Master. 


13. His Literary Contribution 


Ainslie had a flaming urge for expression 
that consumed him. That urge rose not from ambition or 
egotism. It was always an ulterior end that he had in view. 
His earlier volumes, My Brother and 1 , God and Me, Re¬ 
ligion and Daily Doings and The Unfinished Task of the 
Reformation, grew out of his own pastoral experience. 
They dealt with personal devotions and with human rela¬ 
tionships. They were written to help Christian men and 
women in their attempts to reproduce the life and spirit of 
Jesus. Ainslie had before him the average layman, who 
lived in a discordant society where unneighborly attitudes 
ate out the heart of peace-loving and piously inclined 
men and women. 

In his later volumes he was concerned about the broken 
body of Christ, the divided church and the equally divided 
race of men. Consequently all his writing seems of a piece. 
Whatever the subject, it always came back to the same great 
motif. Ainslie saw all causes and questions in the frame 
of the “ one great fraternity.” All evils were sins against 
brotherliness. All good was that which made for unity 
within the church and humanity. He wrote, as he spoke, 
as if some unseen preceptor brooded over his shoulder 
whispering, “ Remember, my people are divided.” Like 
all the prophets of all times, he was impelled by a “ bur¬ 
den.” 

Judgment of his writings must therefore be made in the 
light of their total impact on the one problem he attacked. 

155 


Peter Ainslie 


156 

Being a busy man, he cared less for the manner than the 
matter of his writing. While he had the gift of felicitous 
phrasing, he was driven both from within and from with¬ 
out to hurried expression. He saw the need and the duty 
of bearing witness straightway. Consequently he wrote 
without painstaking care. It may be that his eagerness to 
give immediate help cost him a permanent place in Chris¬ 
tian literature. Possibly he would have been the first to 
admit his defects in style. It was scarcely consistent with 
the true bent of his mind to be deeply concerned for 
literary immortality. The important thing was that the 
rifts in human relationships should be healed, no matter 
by whom or how. Other considerations were secondary. 

This accounts for the “ preaching ” element that runs 
through his writings. Every fact of current experience 
lent itself as a text for a homily. He could not treat a 
theme objectively on account of the human causes which 
looked out at him from behind all the varied fragments 
of the social order to divert him. This was not because his 
mind scattered but because it could not wander from the 
main issue, the broken family of mankind. He could not 
think of the church without remembering how its frag¬ 
mentary corporate life leads to war or to the social tragedy 
reflected in the racial inhospitality of men. When he wrote 
about prayer the human sorrows of the world called out 
to him so loudly that he could not write historically or 
systematically even on a subject that was so dear to his 
own habit of mind. The voices of neglected minorities 
whose prayers mingled with his were always in his ears. 
Thus in his volume on The Fellowship of Prayer he says: 

Christ said more in prayer about the unity of his followers 
than he ever said in public discourse. So long as we keep the 
order reversed there will be uncertain progress in the unity of 
Christendom. Corporate prayer is the method of understand- 



His Literary Contribution 157 

ing and friendship. When four or five persons, each represent¬ 
ing a different communion, have got together in prayer, taking 
with them in their prayer the fact that Christ is in their midst, 
as he said he would be, it is likely that they will go away much 
closer together than if they had spent the time discussing their 
differences or their agreements. Corporate prayer is the path 
to permanent fellowship — not necessarily the only path, but 
the path of abundant hope. It establishes comradeship be¬ 
tween personalities, making for oneness in will, faith and 
purpose. If, however, one discovers aversion toward, or feels 
unfree in, praying with Christians of other scriptural interpre¬ 
tation than his own, he is, to say the least, self-condemned, if 
not involved in moral insecurity, which Jesus frequently and 
severely condemned in the ecclesiastics of his time. 

One reads Ainslie’s books with a sense of being driven out 
of pettiness and bigotry and unfraternal attitudes as by 
some scourge of God. There is but one message in them 
all, ambushing the soul at every turn of the page: denomi- 
nationalism, racialism, nationalism, militarism must be de¬ 
stroyed. 

It is amazing to discover how much Ainslie wrote in view 
of the amount of traveling he did and the exacting labors 
of a busy pastorate. Of books alone he wrote fifteen: 

Religion in Daily Doings — 1903 
Studies in the Old Testament — 1907 
Among the Gospels and the Acts — 1908 
God and Me — 1908 

The Unfinished Task of the Reformation — 1910 
Introduction to the Study of the Bible — 1910 
My Brother and I — 1911 
The Message of the Disciples for the Union 
of the Church (Yale Lectures) — 1913 
Christ or Napoleon — Which? — 1915 
Working with God — 1917 
If Not a United Church — What? — 1920 


158 


Peter Ainslie 


Christian Worship (with H. C. Armstrong) — 1923 
The Way of Prayer — 1924 
The Scandal of Christianity — 1929 
Some Experiments in Living — 1933 

Christ or Napoleon — Which?, written in 1915 when the 
World War was shattering Europe, is Ainslie’s affirmation 
of the enduring elements of Christian faith which comes 
back from every contact with the horror and misery of life 
in unfailing confidence that the way of Christ will triumph 
over the philosophy of might. The book is not a consistent 
or logical treatise. Its value lies in the warmth of its at¬ 
tack and defense, in the reader’s awareness that the author 
feels deeply and cares greatly and will never relent in his 
attitude toward unbrotherliness. He is concerned to show 
that the root of all evil — the evil that breaks out in war 
between nations, in divisions within the body of Christ, 
in barriers between classes — is at last in the human heart. 
Therefore he declares that nothing but a new creation, a 
reborn man, a race that has become Christ-centered, can 
ever bring healing to these sore spots of the world. “ The 
two greatest influences in the world at this time,” he wrote, 

are those expressed by the principles of Jesus Christ and Na¬ 
poleon Bonaparte, the former representing the power of over¬ 
coming evil with good and the latter representing the power 
of overcoming evil with evil. One stands for love, humility 
and self-denial as expressed in the life of yoke-fellowship with 
himself. The other stands for hate, pride and avarice as ex¬ 
pressed in the militarism of these times. The two forces have 
perhaps never been in such severe conflict since the earthly life 
of our Lord. Now they appear in shocking contrast. 

And again he returns to the divided church: 

Not only has the policy of the nations in maintaining great 
armaments as guarantees of peace collapsed into disastrous fail- 


His Literary Contribution 159 

ure, but the policy of the divided church has fallen into an 
equally disastrous collapse. The church was designed to be 
the one peace society of the world. After all these years of 
what should have been accumulated moral force, the church 
should be the one strong and confident voice against war. Had 
it even attempted to live up to the principles of its charter, the 
European war would have been impossible; whereas it appears 
to have no voice on the subject of peace at all, save here and 
there in individual utterances. 

Not that the church has directly produced this war, but in 
discarding the unworldly policy of love, humility and self- 
denial, as expressed by Christ, for the worldly policy of contro¬ 
versial bitterness, intrigue and force, as expressed by Napoleon, 
it has given tremendous strength to the common worldly posi¬ 
tion as manifested in present-day politics and economics, leav¬ 
ing its great influences impotent in behalf of that religion that 
came down from heaven. 

Working with God is a much larger volume having to do 
with his own life and his efforts in the field of religion. 
The very title he gave it confirms and illustrates Dr. George 
W. Richards’ remark about him, that “ he believed he 
was on God’s side.” The book is rich in personal narra¬ 
tives of epochal chapters in his life and ministry. It pre¬ 
sents the philosophy which motivated him in the various 
causes he espoused and in the reforms he championed, and, 
perhaps more than any other of his books, betrays the 
secret of his personal influence, which he once described 
in words most suited to his own nature: “ Nothing is so 
salutary upon the souls of others as for one to move amid 
the busy, hustling and clashing world and maintain that 
inward unity and peace, undisturbed by the outward con¬ 
ditions.” 

If Not a United Church — What? and The Scandal of 
Christianity are quite similar, save that the latter contains 
Ainslie’s arraignment of Protestant division while the 
former sets forth his conviction that a divided church can 


i6o 


Peter Ainslie 


take no permanent or effective place in human society. 
His last book, Some Experiments in Living, was written to 
record his efforts in the realm of social Christianity — the 
experiments he had shared in social justice, marriage and 
the home, interracial bridge-building, church cooperation, 
etc. 

Many of his books overlap one another in scope if not 
in matter. Each succeeding volume, rather than embody¬ 
ing a new contribution to the thought of the world, strikes 
once more at the forces hostile to human brotherhood. 
Each says once again, “ Unbrotherliness must be de¬ 
stroyed.” 

But though Ainslie seemed a man of one passion, his 
thought never grew stale or monotonous. While he had but 
one all-pervading interest, he had many secondary interests 
which replenished the inner flame. He had, for instance, 
a great love of art. A soul so sensitive as his to beauty 
could not but respond to the high manifestations of beauty 
in Christian painting and sculpture. Hence it is not sur¬ 
prising that he should have planned a book on Christian 
art — had indeed gathered practically all the material for it. 

He possessed reproductions of all the great masterpieces 
of Christian art. Rarely did he return from London or 
Paris without bringing home some new sketch. A copy of 
some famous masterpiece was the gift he best loved to give. 
He knew the biographies of the great^ painters and the his¬ 
tory of painting. His illustrations for sermons and ad¬ 
dresses were constantly reflecting this interest. In his ear¬ 
lier years he had written much on the great paintings which 
celebrate the central facts of Christian history. Thus in 
Working with God he said: 

I would not want to be an art critic but I am somewhat a 
student of art. In the spring of 1912 I delivered a course of 
lectures at the University of Illinois on Christian art, and at 


His Literary Contribution 161 

other times I have spoken on this delightful subject, having 
made it one of my occasional studies in the latter half of my 
twenty-five years’ ministry in Baltimore. Art is, indeed, a mat¬ 
ter of common concern, said Canon Farrar, and every man of 
ordinary education has a right to an opinion, if not upon its 
technical qualities, yet at least upon the thoughts which it con¬ 
veys and the influence which it exercises over his mind. Next 
to the human face there is nothing more attractive to the eye 
than a picture, irrespective of the age, the education or the 
social condition of the beholder. Aristotle insisted that art 
should have a moral influence upon the people and later 
Schasler affirmed that the aim of art is moral perfection. 
Michelangelo said, “ True painting is only an image of God’s 
perfection, a shadow of the pencil with which he paints, a 
melody, a striving after harmony.” Like music, pictures speak 
a universal language and teach more people than any other 
single means of learning. The pictures upon which we daily 
look should be selected with more care than the food we eat. 
It is no longer a question of expense, for the best pictures are 
among the cheapest and a frame is an inexpensive decoration. 
The purpose of knowledge is to find truth — the soul’s anchor; 
according to Schiller and Kant, the purpose of art is to find 
beauty — the soul’s peace. 

In Christian art and literature Ainslie saw many nations 
and peoples of different periods moving toward a common 
end. That end was the unity of the human race. He saw 
the artists and poets converging toward one Man. Or, to 
change the figure, he found here the bridge over which the 
race could pass into brotherhood. He had not time to com¬ 
plete the book which would have stated this philosophy 
clearly, but the experience of collecting the material en¬ 
abled him to see in sharper perspective all those countless 
streams flowing down from the highlands of inspiration to 
water the lowlands where fratricidal conflict had been 
waged since Cain slew his brother. He saw the artist of 
each separate race or nation depicting Christ in the linea¬ 
ments of his own people, as an Italian or Russian or 


162 


Peter Ainslie 


Dutch child, and the fact that Jesus was claimed by peoples 
who were immemorial enemies constituted for him the 
“ one hope of our poor wayward race ” that had promise 
of peace and fellowship. Much as Ainslie came to love art 
and to enjoy great masterpieces, he never found it more 
than a means to an end. That end was the witness it bore 
to the unifying principle in the world: the place and power 
of the Galilean in bringing the divided peoples of the world 
into one harmonious whole. 

But Ainslie’s literary labors were by no means confined 
to books. The Christian Union Quarterly, which he edited 
for twenty years, was the heaviest of his literary responsi¬ 
bilities. Peter Ainslie came nearest to living literature in a 
magazine he began to publish forty years ago. It was at 
first a small publication, issued in the interest of good will 
between the churches. In 1910 it grew into the Christian 
Union Quarterly. Mr. W. H. Hoover of North Canton, 
Ohio, established it on a foundation of what then amounted 
to fifty thousand dollars. 

While Ainslie solicited articles for the Quarterly from 
exponents of every shade of religious thought, he wrote all 
the editorials and knit the various contributions of others 
into one harmonious whole by the interpretative articles 
he added to each issue. At Ainslie’s death the Quarterly 
was discontinued, but his idea was immediately taken up 
and enlarged upon by Dr. Charles Clayton Morrison in 
Christendom. Through Dr. Morrison’s generosity Chris¬ 
tendom has since become the organ of the Federal Council 
of the Churches of Christ in America. In this journal Peter 
Ainslie continues to live and speak. 

A collection of all the writings of Ainslie would fill many 
volumes. His multiplied labors entailed a prodigious 
amount of writing, both in extensive correspondence and 
in an editorial capacity. He made voluminous contribu- 


His Literary Contribution 163 

tions to religious newspapers and journals on the causes 
that were dear to him. He was projecting still more books 
when he was stricken down. Besides the book on art, he 
was working on a “ New Testament for Youth.” This was 
to have been a synthetic compilation derived from the Syn¬ 
optic Gospels and based on what he regarded as the most 
acceptable renderings of three recent translators — Mof- 
fatt, Weymouth and Goodspeed. In the midst of physical 
pain so great that his heart finally snapped under it, he sat 
propped up in his bed, with various translations lying all 
about him, and with pen and pad he wove together a com¬ 
posite translation which he hoped would be truer to the 
original text and more appealing to youth. 

In all his writings he saw the whole of life harried by 
unbrotherliness. Is it a broken home where children are 
at disadvantage because of the quarrels or the divorce in 
it? That is like the impoverishment Christians suffer be¬ 
cause of the broken household of God which dwarfs and 
stunts the Christian experience. Is it prayer which is uni¬ 
versal and innate? But how can they be said to be praying 
when what they seek is partisan or national or denomina¬ 
tional? In all of Ainslie’s volumes, the train of the reader’s 
thought is perpetually preyed upon by the imminent cry 
that runs through the world — the sorrows of Rachel 
“ weeping for her children.” 


14. His Inner Qualities 


It WOULD have been distasteful to Peter 
Ainslie to hear that people anywhere were making of him 
an ideal. He could say the things he said and do the things 
he did because those things became him. Such a man is not 
meant to be imitated. He would have been the despair 
of more methodical people. And the measure of his 
achievements would also have been their despair. He was 
not the obvious sum of two plus two, nor of any number 
of given or known elements. If one were to catalogue all 
the deeds and services and ministrations of Peter Ainslie 
there would remain a plus which could never be put into 
a formula. It was not in what he said or wrote or did, but 
in what he was. Without reason, some personalities strike 
us as unlovely, as in Thomas Brown’s famous lines: 

I do not love thee, Dr. Fell; 

The reason why I cannot tell. 

Just so, one could not tell why Peter Ainslie’s person¬ 
ality drew and held men to him. Such a man can best be 
described in the language of Jesus concerning the new 
birth: “ The wind bloweth where it listeth and thou hear- 
est the sound thereof but canst not tell whence it cometh, 
and whither it goeth.” This is not to say that he was 
lawless; rather that he followed laws not easily discernible 
by less spiritual minds. Like John Knox, “ so feared he 
God that he feared not any man.” He had no doubts 
about his methods or about the final issue of the causes he 

164 


His Inner Qualities 165 

championed; they could not fail. Believing that he was 
“ on God’s side ” amounted to believing that God was on 
his side. He identified himself so thoroughly with what he 
felt God wanted him to do that it became natural for him 
to feel that God was working with and for him. He ab¬ 
sorbed from this conviction a courage which gave him the 
strength of ten. He had what has been called “ the awful 
power of those who are on the side of the angels.” 

Ainslie was always a Puritan with a Puritan’s courage and 
conviction that he was on God’s side. Yet that conviction 
was mingled with a tenderness and gentleness the Puri¬ 
tans scarcely knew or exhibited. Like Martin Luther, 
when he took a position he did it because he “ could do 
no other.” 

There was in him too that “ inward unity ” about which 
he so often spoke and wrote. This made him the com¬ 
posed soul he was. Whatever outward excitement sur¬ 
rounded him, he wore an air of at-homeness, of imper¬ 
turbability. When he spoke at public gatherings his own 
inner serenity put his audience at ease. The most captivat¬ 
ing quality of the man was his complete tranquillity. 

The foundations for that tranquillity were laid early, 
when Ainslie learned the need of conserving his physical 
strength. One of the remarkable facts about Peter Ainslie 
was his victory over the ill-health that halted his steps as 
a child and as a young man. While he was never rugged, 
he did live to a good age and performed a prodigious 
amount of work. His travels were very considerable both 
on the North American continent and in Europe. Be¬ 
cause he would give himself to the least of human needs his 
pastoral duties were beyond the average in their demand 
upon his vitality, while his public services and addresses 
took their toll of his strength. Though he had to take one 
day out of the week for total withdrawal and rest, yet no 


i66 


Peter Ainslie 


sooner was this retreat observed than he was off again to 
still further labors. He had gathered a momentum that 
impelled him even while he was presumably resting. 

The qualities of daring and determination in Peter Ains¬ 
lie worked out for good in the great issue of his life. But 
who will not agree that these very qualities have their 
peril? Daring is always in danger of making advances that 
are unwise or difficult to maintain. Determination is al¬ 
ways under the temptation to go on its chosen way, con¬ 
scious or unconscious of the pain it may cause less forceful 
personalities. It is not necessary in any strong man’s bi¬ 
ography to point out where and when and how his strength 
expressed itself untowardly. It is enough to know that 
the plow cannot turn the furrow without much uprooting 
that seems ruthless and hard. We make our estimate of 
any forceful life by the degree in which this inevitable 
temptation has been held in leash. 

Ainslie touched many realms of life but always with the 
same intent. He had St. Paul’s “ this one thing I do ” 
spirit, or what psychologists call a “ single-track mind.” 
He played his part in many enterprises, but always because 
they had a common purpose: the value they held for human 
fellowship under the influence of Jesus. 

The same single-mindedness showed itself in his con¬ 
versations. A man of wide travel and of most unusual op¬ 
portunities to make notable contacts with the leading re¬ 
ligious spirits of his generation, he could have held social 
gatherings in the spell of his narratives of personal experi¬ 
ence. But anyone who knew him well or was often in his 
company would bear witness to the uncanny way he had of 
routing any conversation to his chosen theme. No matter 
where the talk began or what its fascination, the strong 
wind of his deepest desire soon blew him into the subject of 
peace and human accord. Once there, he had his audience, 
whether an individual or a thousand, at his will. He knew 


His Inner Qualities 167 

the weapons that were most effective in that battle of wits. 
He also knew the value of such occasions for making new 
friends for the common cause. Like another Cato with his 
perpetual “ Carthago delenda est ” he kept his own battle- 
cry forever dinning in men’s ears. 

Ordinarily a man who is dominated by one idea is a man 
to be shunned. But when that idea burns into white heat 
and becomes a consuming flame, a new center of human 
attractiveness is set up. A man who is “ lifted up ” for a 
cause or an idea draws all men unto him. Ainslie’s en¬ 
thusiasm for the welfare of all men became contagious. 
Jesus preached one of his best remembered sermons to a 
lone woman at a wayside well. Ainslie loved to quote the 
experience of a Robert Moffatt making but one convert 
in an appeal, but that convert a David Livingstone. 

One may well inquire for the secret of the man. What 
he did was prodigious enough. But it was the man within 
that most appealed to those who knew him best. He had 
that quality of soul which constant discipline had fash¬ 
ioned. He was not an ascetic or a hermit, but despite his 
accessibility he lived very much unto himself and within 
himself. He had the power of detachment by which he 
could withdraw himself from absorbing and exhausting 
surroundings and be in them but not of them. 

Ainslie was in fact a practical mystic. Many streams of 
mystic influence emptied themselves into his nature. His 
mother’s place in his life was decidedly one of these. Her 
continued ill-health and his own contributed what pain 
and suffering so often bring: time for meditation and the 
brooding spirit. “ Affliction does color life, doesn’t it? ” 
a would-be comforter once said to a longtime sufferer. 
“ Yes,” answered the sufferer, “ but I choose the color.” 
Ainslie chose his colors. “ One must find out,” he wrote, 

that which suits his own soul and not try to make himself that 
which he is not, but rather develop himself in that which he is. 


i68 


Peter Ainslie 


I followed the mystical mind of Paul, Augustine, Thomas a 
Kempis, John Woolman, Jeremy Taylor, John Wesley and 
others; and later Baron von Hiigel, Dean W. R. Inge and 
Rufus M. Jones. These lighted up the way and helped me 
toward a larger appreciation of Jesus. 

As a result prayer took a large place in his life. In 
Winifred Kirkland’s The Portrait of a Carpenter these 
lines are found: 

Jesus in manhood reveals such a capacity for prayer as could 
only have come from long-continued custom. Jesus of Naza¬ 
reth learned how to pray greatly, precisely as every other man 
who has ever prayed greatly, has learned. Jesus advanced as 
other men advance, and in him as in all of us the supernatural 
existed not as a gift from without but as a development from 
within. 

This aptly describes Peter Ainslie’s manner of praying. 
Prayer was a normal part of all he did and was. It came 
naturally into his daily routine. One who was much with 
him spoke of his custom of turning suddenly from what¬ 
ever interest claimed him to God in a colloquial “ aside.” 
Ainslie invited guests and callers to kneel for prayer as 
casually as others might throw open a window for fresh 
air. There was never any strain or awkwardness about it. 
He acted as if prayer were the familiar habit of all men. 
There was no consciousness of readjusting the stage or of 
shifting physical or mental attitudes. His own words de¬ 
scribe his view of prayer: 

We must go to our prayer-time with expectancy of renewal 
and revival. We will not get as much out of it if we go to it 
from a sense of duty as if we go to it from a sense of desire. 
We must always remember that God is very sensitive — more 
sensitive than the most sensitive human being — and we must 
keep to the front courtesy, sincerity and fidelity. Be sure that 
we do not do all the talking — wait. Place and time are in- 


His Inner Qualities 169 

consequential, but the engagement must be positive, gladly 
and leisurely kept. 

He once expressed regret that he had “ preached so 
much and prayed so little.” “ Sometimes when I go 
through my church on the pulpit platform where I have 
stood, I find myself asking: Oh that I had a space so marked 
by my knees in prayer for my people as I have worn this 
place in preaching to them.” 

When he carried on his widespread work for Christian 
unity he dwelt much on the power of small groups organ¬ 
ized for prayer. Fellowship in prayer, he felt, gave most 
promise of religious understanding and held most hope 
for the reunion of the divided church. He conceived 
prayer as an integrating force, leading to the discovery of 
a common kinship in Christ. 

He once took an entire year’s leave from his pulpit to 
visit schools and colleges. The deepest impression he 
brought back from his conferences with thousands of stu¬ 
dents was that of their need of spiritual guidance. It was 
with this need in mind that he prepared his volume The 
Way of Prayer. In this book he reflected upon the neces¬ 
sity of communal prayer: 

There can be no such thing as Catholic or Protestant prayers 
with prejudice in favor of or against the other. Prayer can 
never become a large factor in Christianity until Christians be¬ 
come a united brotherhood around Jesus as Lord and Savior. 
We are under obligations to establish in our minds those atti¬ 
tudes that are not satisfied with anything less than the fellow¬ 
ship of the whole Church of God. 

Both in the private practice of prayer and in public dis¬ 
cussion of it, he stressed the sense of friendship which 
underlies true prayer. He dwelt much upon Abram’s re¬ 
lation to God — that of “ a friend of God.” The attitude 
of mere obedience in prayer, he declared, was pagan and 


Peter Ainslie 


170 

led to unreality. Its secret was utter surrender of the will 
to the love of God, an attitude which leads to the relation 
of friendship between a man and his Creator. “ Prayer is 
not a ritual; it is an experience. In its practice we become 
a part of the great circle of God and human souls, both in 
the past and in the present.” 

It was in the crucible of mutual experiences which others 
shared with Ainslie that they found out the soul of the 
man. On this account, those who differed widely from his 
theological conceptions still regarded him as a warm per¬ 
sonal friend. While they were fearful of the consequences 
of his ideas, they were at the same time thoroughly confi¬ 
dent of his sincerity. There were many who distrusted his 
orthodoxy and viewed his liberal attitudes as inimical to 
the true faith, but rose up to call him blessed when he 
died. What they were unable to comprehend in him they 
called heresy; what they could understand of his nature 
was to them the true gospel. But the known and the mys¬ 
terious in him were one in warp and woof. The experi¬ 
menter is always a cause of concern to the fixed mind. It 
is conceivable that some timid folk felt uncomfortable so 
long as he lived, though adoring the rich quality of soul 
they could not but respect. But for those who had “ com- 
panied with him ” in the deeper experiences of life he be¬ 
came what Lincoln was to Franklin K. Lane, who asserted, 
“ I know I could understand him.” 

It was a customary remark of Ainslie’s close friends that 
“ the angels took care of him.” He seemed to be oblivious 
of many of the ordinary necessities of life which common 
mortals neglect at their peril. Thus, although he had 
driven an automobile thousands of miles, he once replied 
to a friend who inquired whether the spark plugs were not 
dirty: “ What are spark plugs? ” Again, his failure to put 
water in the radiator caused his car to stop suddenly at a 
busy intersection in the heart of Baltimore. A blustering 


His Inner Qualities 171 

policeman bade him move on and get the car out of the 
traffic. Unembarrassed by his predicament, Ainslie asked 
the policeman to tell him what was the matter with his 
car! 

There was charm about his unaffected simplicity. His 
frank artlessness made one want to help him. Because he 
obviously had no ulterior motives, there were no barriers 
to be hurdled to get at him. His quiet humor and love of 
beauty and naivete and mysticism combined to make him 
at once captivating and strong. So patiently did he deal 
with thousands, so kindly did he meet the needs of others, 
so gently did he move among the fierce and furious an¬ 
tagonisms of his generation that the response of apprecia¬ 
tion was both deep and wide. But those who knew him 
best loved him most. 

His humor was as quaint as his rural childhood surround¬ 
ings. It was never sharp or wounding but always carried 
a moral. For example, one of his parishioners left his 
church to join a “ Holiness ” congregation. When Ainslie 
next met him he said: “ John, I am so glad you have joined 
the Holiness church, for now I know you will treat your 
mother better.” Instantly John waxed hot with anger, but 
before he could say much Ainslie interrupted: “ I see you 
are just like you were in my church.” 

The Hudson river, as it enters the sea, is subject to a 
multitude of surface influences that set ripples going in 
many directions. A passing boat, a gust of wind, a pro¬ 
jecting pier may cause wavelets that conflict in their testi¬ 
mony as to the direction the river is taking. But deep 
down, there is always the strong current that prevails and 
gives the stream its real direction. Just so, Peter Ainslie 
“ drew from great depths of being ” and, undeterred by a 
thousand influences that beat upon him, kept his one di¬ 
rection. 


IS. Marriage and Home Life 


After fifty-six years of life as a bachelor, 
Peter Ainslie decided to get married. For many years of 
his earlier ministry his mother was the hostess of the manse. 
She guarded his health and his energies and was his coun¬ 
selor in the problems that a busy pastor daily brings to his 
home and fireside. Even during her long illness she kept 
a most eager interest in the affairs of the Christian Temple. 
At the same time a cherished sister lived with him. She 
filled the needful function of becoming the ear of the 
pastor’s home and patiently mediated the delicate concerns 
of the parish, to his grateful satisfaction. She too passed 
away within a week of their mother’s death. Thereafter a 
favored aunt of his made her home with him, but she had 
died some years before his marriage. When all these ten¬ 
der ministrations to mother and sister and aunt had been 
fulfilled, a longing for a home came upon him all the more 
acutely. 

It is not easy to reshape a nature once its habits are fixed. 
Sylvester Horne said of St. Paul’s assistant, Timothy, that 
“it is always a perilous thing for a boy to be the idol of 
two good women, his mother and his grandmother.” But 
Peter Ainslie had been the idol of three good women, his 
mother, his sister and his aunt. For fifty-six years he dis¬ 
charged toward them every possible duty that love imposed. 
Now he determined to find a new center for his affections. 
It was a decision that brought him deep joy. 

He said one day to a friend, “ I am going to get mar- 
172 
























0 



















/ 


\ 











Mrs. Peter Ainslie 















Marriage and Home Life 173 

ried.” “To whom? ” asked his astonished listener. “ I 
do not know; I only know that I am going to get married.” 
Like the scientist who sets out in search of a cause for a 
known effect, he began his quest with a determination and 
a methodical temper not usual in this period of a man’s 
life. Some time later he told the same friend with en¬ 
thusiasm, “ I have found her. Her name is Mary Weisel.” 

It was singularly apt that he should have “ found her ” 
at a conference — indeed one which he himself had called 
to discuss an acute issue between the whites and Negroes in 
Baltimore. Miss Mary Weisel was dean of a Presbyterian 
girls’ seminary in Baltimore, and a deep student of religious 
education. She brought to this conference such clear and 
concise suggestions and such evident zeal that she quite 
won the mind and heart of the moderator. Their minds 
met on the social and human problems of a disturbed city; 
their hearts followed hard after. Their common concern 
for interracial understanding and international peace made 
an easy trellis for their emotions to twine about. 

It was their desire to be married at an altar that might 
symbolize the wider conceptions of his ministry. They ap¬ 
pealed to Dr. Henry Sloane Coffin, president of Union 
Theological Seminary, and he graciously offered them St. 
James Chapel. Here they were married by the author, 
surrounded by an intimate group of distinguished friends, 
on June 30, 1925. They received the congratulations of 
the entire company on the green quadrangle of this “ Ox¬ 
ford in America ” under a smiling sky. That very day they 
sailed away for Sweden on their honeymoon — but of 
course to attend a conference! This was the conference 
held by the Life and Work section of what has now come to 
be an integral part of the World Council of Churches. 

Such is the story of a unique courtship that gave Peter 
Ainslie and his wife nine and one-half years of happy fam- 


Peter Ainslie 


174 

ily life. The Ainslies built a home in Ten Hills, Balti¬ 
more. It was fitting that when the house was finished they 
dedicated it as one would dedicate a church. It was fitting 
too that the house contained a “ prayer room,” a quiet nook 
with an altar and a Bible. 

Mary and Peter Ainslie spoke the same language, the 
language of reconciliation. Married life therefore did not 
mean a conversion to new or different interests for either 
of them. They merely joined forces in behalf of the causes 
which had first introduced them to each other, and in the 
continuance of these major interests they multiplied their 
deepest satisfactions. Home opened a larger door to Peter 
Ainslie’s love for collective discussion. Here again he was 
the typical Virginian in the best sense. Hospitality was his 
delight. His home sheltered every traveling evangelist or 
clerical emissary who came that way. Many guests found 
hospitable welcome under its roof and none ever departed 
without carrying away the benediction of memories which 
had firm rootage in the experiences of the family altar. 
Groups and individual guests alike came within its sa¬ 
cred enclosure, to be caught up in the glow of discussion. 
Young people shared its hospitality in conference manner. 
The atmosphere of the home was an invitation to contrib¬ 
ute whatever of light or wisdom each life had gained. The 
manse became a laboratory for the church and for humani¬ 
tarian causes within the city. 

Two children were born of this marriage — Mary Eliza¬ 
beth, born April 20, 1927, and Peter IV, born July 6, 1929. 
With the advent of the children life for Peter Ainslie took 
on a new impulse. The large yard of the home, with its 
brook and spreading trees and outdoor fireplace, became 
a center for the young life of the congregation and com¬ 
munity into which he poured his rich personality with 
fresh inspiration and joy. His last years were busy as usual. 



Dr. and Mrs. Ainslie and Mary Elizabeth 













Marriage and Home Life 


175 

But they were made easier and more joyful because of the 
sympathetic companion with whom he could discuss his 
prolific ideas about every kind of cooperative movement 
that looked toward the building of a safe and stable society 
and the coming of peace and good will to the divided 
church. 

In this exemplary family circle, where growth and pur¬ 
pose were the law and family prayers were as natural as 
nursery games, the casual visitor seemed to come upon new 
horizons, and when he departed felt that something from 
“ beyond the flaming ramparts of the world ” had touched 
him. 

This story therefore closes as it began, with a picture of 
the manse. In the home of the former Count and Countess 
Braha of Sweden is an ancient volume of European her¬ 
aldry which lists the Ainslies as among the first families of 
Europe, dating back to the twelfth century. A more en¬ 
during book of heraldry is being written in America, where 
the names of the brave and gallant spirits of the western 
continent are being inscribed. Those who look in it will 
find the Ainslies appearing again in the twentieth century. 


16 . “Now the Laborer s Task is O’er” 


At THE age of sixty-six, Peter Ainslie had ac¬ 
complished more than most men, even the physically 
strong. For one who had known perpetually depleted 
strength he had achieved incalculably. None of his self- 
imposed tasks ever grew irksome, for he felt that they were 
making for a happier and better world. He always worked 
with the full consciousness of his definite physical limita¬ 
tions, which it would be fatal for him to transgress. But 
he seemed to draw from invisible springs a vitality suffi¬ 
cient for ever greater labors. He was disciplined to work 
without fret or strain. One rarely saw him driven. He 
gave the impression that what he could do, he would, and 
that must suffice. 

Unlike many whose activities are conditioned by a frail 
body, he never became a defeatist or allowed the edge of 
his cheerfulness to be dulled. Nor was he a Pollyanna, 
pumping up his spirit with the air of an unsubstantial op¬ 
timism. He did not call attention to his pain or seek sym¬ 
pathy because of what trouble he had borne to “ get where 
he had arrived.” His life was lived as a victory of the spirit 
over the flesh, and without pride in its accomplishments. 

The will which he made in 1926, eight years before his 
death, lays bare the compelling motives for which he lived 
and gives full expression to a mood that conceived life as 
a totality, “ whether in the flesh or out of it.” The press 
gave this account of the will: 

176 



Peter Ainslie III and IV 







“Now the Laborer’s Task is O’er” 177 

The will of the Rev. Dr. Peter Ainslie, pastor of Christian 
Temple, who died February 24, 1934, was filed in Orphan 
Court. The will was written in pen and ink on July 26, 1926. 
It was witnessed by James C. Lumpkin, F. M. Lumpkin and 
E. W. Billings. Text of will, which reads: 

“ I, Peter Ainslie, desire that this document shall contain my 
last will and testament relative to my material holdings. I am 
glad to have lived in the flesh as long as I have, but this material 
world cannot satisfy me. I have enjoyed it as a beginning- 
place, but I am sure that I shall like the other world better, 
because I am God’s child and he takes us from good to the best. 

“ The consciousness of my deep need of God, which grows 
on me with the years, is my abiding hope, and I have found 
great satisfaction in following Jesus Christ, my Lord, whose I 
am and whom I serve. 

“ I have not tried to make money. I have avoided it, giving 
my time to other things regardless of money. I have declined 
large salaries with ease, because I wanted to prove to my own 
heart and Christ, my Savior, that I am willing to preach the 
gospel without money consideration, lest some should say I am 
preaching for money. 

“ Nevertheless, the holdings I have are reminders to me that 
[I should] be cared for in sickness and in old age. 

“ I wish the Baltimore Trust Company to be advisers, par¬ 
ticularly my friend, Waldo Newcomer, to my wife, Mary Eliza¬ 
beth Ainslie, to whom I leave all my material things for her 
use and the use of our child or children. I wish him to serve 
without bond. I wish also the trustees of the Christian Temple 
to be consulted, I trust their advice, for they have served well 
with me. If the conditions justify it, I would like a sum to be 
given to the Disciples Divinity House of Chicago University 
and also my books that my wife may desire to give. 

“ My friends who are God’s gift to me I shall remember for¬ 
ever, especially those who have made possible my ministry in 
the Christian Temple and elsewhere. My love to the whole 
church, divided into Eastern Orthodox, Catholic, Anglican, 
Protestant, and others of our Lord Jesus Christ, which he pur¬ 
chased, and to him the glory forever and ever. Amen.” 

This was no late profession of his faith and hope written 
in the face of death. It was the epitome of all he had pro- 


Peter Ainslie 


178 

fessed. It reveals the spirit of the man and, to those who 
knew him best, fairly and sincerely incorporates his ruling 
beliefs. Having been acquainted with physical weakness 
all his life, he was yet the triumphant victor over self-pity. 
Knowing that he had in him the seeds of death, he knew 
more surely that he had captured the seeds of immortality, 
that the current of all good living is unbroken by the ex¬ 
perience of death. 

Possibly nothing so became Peter Ainslie as his taking 
off. His manner of going and his conception of immortal¬ 
ity were one. He had carried on his labors far beyond his 
years of expectancy. But at last “ the wheel was broken at 
the cistern.” He was taken to Johns Hopkins Hospital, 
where an operation revealed that he had an incurable dis¬ 
ease and must fortify himself for the inevitable end. It was 
then that his qualities shone out in their full, clear light. 
He took an all but stoic attitude toward his pain, while 
the Christian character of his spirit came more perfectly to 
flower. When he went out at the end of his day, he went 
out working. 

When at length “ the golden bowl was broken,” the city 
joined with his family and congregation in expressions of 
deep affection. The proof of city-wide esteem was nobly 
expressed in the following editorial. One of his last re¬ 
quests had been that his obsequies be simple, lest os¬ 
tentation draw attention to his achievements. The very 
atmosphere of the funeral, he said, should partake of 
the qualities of life. Commemorative addresses were 
to be impersonal, having to do with flesh-and-blood 
causes that call for action and solution. His wish for his 
church and his family was that they should carry on with 
normal joy and courage and give no hint of sorrow in a 
world that had sorrows enough. 

The funeral service was conducted in the Christian Tern- 


“Now the Laborer’s Task is O’er” 179 

pie. Notwithstanding a severe snowstorm which congested 
traffic, the audience filled every available space in and 
about the building. According to Ainslie’s wish, those who 
shared in the funeral service were Mrs. A. Morris Carey, 
minister of Homewood Friends Meeting House; Charles 
Walter Lane, elder of the Christian Temple; Rabbi 
Rosenau of Eutaw Place Temple; Dr. Albert Day of Mount 
Vernon Methodist Episcopal Church; Levi B. Miller of 
Unity Christian, and the author. At the grave his beloved 
friend and fellow minister. Dr. Arthur Kinsolving, rector 
of St. Paul’s Protestant Episcopal Church in Baltimore, 
read the committal service from the Prayer Book. Those 
who witnessed it will never forget the scene — this beloved 
friend and minister half-kneeling in the deep snow and re¬ 
peating in gentle cadences those exquisite lines: 

We give him back to Thee, dear Lord, who gavest him to 
us. Yet as Thou didst not lose him in giving, so we have not 
lost him by his return. 

Not as the world giveth, givest Thou, O Lover of souls. 
What Thou gavest. Thou takest not away; for what is Thine, is 
ours always, if we are Thine. And life is eternal and love is im¬ 
mortal, and death is only an horizon, and an horizon is nothing 
save the limit of our sight. 

Lift us up, strong Son of God, that we may see farther. 
Cleanse our eyes that we may see more clearly. Draw us closer 
to Thyself that we may know ourselves nearer to our beloved 
who are with Thee. And while Thou dost prepare a place for 
us, prepare us for that happy place that where they are and 
Thou art, we too may be; through Jesus Christ our Lord. 
Amen. 

The church he served so faithfully and so long erected a 
simple but substantial monument over his grave in Loudon 
Park Cemetery, but it will crumble to dust sooner than his 
gracious influence will cease to be felt in his beloved city 
and far beyond. 


i8o 


Peter Ainslie 


No tribute from religious circles could equal, in demon¬ 
stration of the general esteem in which Peter Ainslie was 
held, the following editorial encomium which appeared in 
the Baltimore Sun at the time of his death, February 24, 
1934. It was the unsolicited expression of a first-class met¬ 
ropolitan journal, revealing the public appreciation of the 
character and services of the man whose steps we have been 
following across the nation and about the world. Much as 
he was honored abroad, this significant tribute by his fel¬ 
low citizens is his best. As we leave his dust in the soil of 
the city he loved, and wherein he performed most of his 
work, we now leave his best appraisal to the impartial lan¬ 
guage of his distinguished public collaborator: 

DR. AINSLIE 

The Rev. Dr. Peter Ainslie will be sadly missed in Baltimore 
and in the larger national and international fields in which he 
had come to exercise an influence. 

But it cannot be said that he died before he had fought the 
good fight and finished the course that had been appointed 
for him to run. He had been active for forty years in the pul¬ 
pit and in the social service to which he attached so much im¬ 
portance. He had achieved a local and then a national repu¬ 
tation as a champion of good but often unpopular causes. He 
had helped to make his congregation, his community, his state 
and even his nation more acutely conscious of social responsi¬ 
bilities. He had poured out his energy without stint in behalf 
of the meek and the lowly and the oppressed. Few ministers 
anywhere could look back on such a record of achievement. 

With it all, Dr. Ainslie was one of the most modest of men. 
He was what we call today a liberal, but he had none of the 
pride of opinion with which the name is so often associated. 
He was an unfailing advocate of the downtrodden and yet he 
easily avoided the sometimes unfortunate attributes of profes¬ 
sional agitators. Perhaps it was this quality, more than any¬ 
thing else, which enabled him to win and hold the admiration 
of such numbers of men and women of widely diverse minds. 
It may have been the same quality which caused him to spend 


“Now the Laborer’s Task is O’er” 181 

practically his entire career in the service of the same congrega¬ 
tion, and to have that congregation wish always to retain him. 

This is not to say that Dr. Ainslie fought for what he be¬ 
lieved with kid gloves. He had the power of challenging, pro¬ 
vocative utterance, and he did not hesitate to use it. And he 
carried his principles to their logical conclusion without fear 
of the consequences, as witness his declaration that to be chap 
lain in the army or navy involved a contradiction in thought 
and terms. Not everyone could agree with such absolute logic, 
but all who knew him could and did accept the logician while 
he lived, and all will honor his memory now that he is gone. 


“ NOW THE LABORER’S TASK IS O’ER ” 
Read, by Dr. Arthur Kinsolving at the grave 

Now the laborer’s task is o’er; 

Now the battle day is past; 

Now upon the farther shore 
Lands the voyager at last. 

Father, in Thy gracious keeping 
Leave we now Thy servant sleeping. 

There the tears of earth are dried; 
There its hidden things are clear; 
There the work of life is tried 
By a juster Judge than here. 

Father, in Thy gracious keeping 
Leave we now Thy servant sleeping. 

Now we lift our tear-dimmed eyes 
To the smiling skies above. 

And we know our dear one lies 
In the bosom of Thy love. 

Father, in Thy gracious keeping 
Leave we now Thy servant sleeping. 


Appreciations 


Among all the tributes paid Peter Ainslie at 
his death, the following few represent the appreciation in 
which he was held among various religious communions in 
America: 

There may be an abler, nobler, more enlightened man in the 
American ministry but if so we do not know who he is. Peter 
Ainslie had a way of coming clean on the outstanding and most 
dangerous issues of the hour. — John Haynes Holmes. 

He promoted many activities, helped advance many causes, 
labored with all his might to forward church unity, but greater 
than anything he said or wrote was the life behind it all. 
— Rufus Jones. 

Rarely are the qualities that make a saintly and beneficent 
life so combined as they were in the character of Peter Ains¬ 
lie. — Herbert L. Willett. 

Where shall we find a like-minded unwearied spirit to con¬ 
tinue Dr. Ainslie’s work? — Bishop Boyd Vincent of Ohio. 

To speak of Christian unity anywhere in the United States 
was to think of Peter Ainslie, for in him to an extent rare in 
these days of lip service to great causes, the ideal had become 
incarnate. — William Adams Brown. 

In Dr. Ainslie, I felt that I faced a man with the personality 
of extraordinary charm, with the enthusiasm of a prophet, the 
restraint of a scholar, and the bearing of a gentleman. He felt 
himself to be on the side of God and was upheld by the con¬ 
viction that what God wants and man needs will ultimately 
prevail. — George W. Richards. 

He has brought Christians together; he has broken down 
prejudices; he has compelled thinking. — Bishop Edward L. 
Parsons of California. 

183 


Peter Ainslie 


184 

I think he was constitutionally of the stuff that would have 
made a gritty denominational fighter if there had been any¬ 
thing to fight about, but to him in our day the only thing in 
denominationalism worth fighting about was denominational- 
ism itself. The essence of his life was the freshness of his 
spiritual vitality, the keenness of his moral discernment, the 
passion of his love for Christ. — Bishop Francis J. McConnell 
of New York. 

He might be outwitted but never uprooted. He never gave 
half his mind to any discussion or half his energy to any action. 
He could not be satisfied with less than the ideal. — William 
Pierson Merrill, Brick Church, New York City. 

Peter Ainslie was a great prophet and a contagious inspirer 
in every phase of the movement and of all the movements. — 
Charles S. MacFarland, former General Secretary of the Fed¬ 
eral Council of Churches of Christ in America. 

The spirit of fellowship was the precious heirloom of his 
bestowal which made all men kin irrespective of their religious 
affiliations. — Rabbi Rosenau of Baltimore. 




































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































